# Engaging students: Finding x- and y-intercepts

In my capstone class for future secondary math teachers, I ask my students to come up with ideas for engaging their students with different topics in the secondary mathematics curriculum. In other words, the point of the assignment was not to devise a full-blown lesson plan on this topic. Instead, I asked my students to think about three different ways of getting their students interested in the topic in the first place.

I plan to share some of the best of these ideas on this blog (after asking my students’ permission, of course).

This student submission again comes from my former student Maranda Edmonson. Her topic, from Algebra: finding $x-$ and $y-$intercepts. Unlike most student submissions, Maranda’s idea answers three different questions at once.

Applications: How could you as a teacher create an activity or project that involves your topic?

Culture: How has this topic appeared in pop culture (movies, TV, current music, video games, etc.)?

Technology: How can technology be used to effectively engage students with this topic?

This link is to a reflection by a mathematics teacher who used the popular TV show “The Big Bang Theory” to teach linear functions. She taught this lesson prior to teaching students about finding $y-$intercepts of linear functions, but it can be adapted in order to teach how to find the intercepts themselves.

ENGAGE:

One thing I would not change would be to show the students the above clip of the show where Howard and Sheldon are heatedly discussing crickets at the beginning of the activity. By showing the video at the beginning, students will be engaged and want to figure out what will be done throughout the lesson. Being a clip of a popular show that many probably watch during the week, students will be even more engaged and interested since they are able to watch something that they are already familiar with. Being something that they are already familiar with or can relate to, students have a tendency to remember the material or at least the topic longer than they would remember something that they were unfamiliar with or could not relate.

In the clip, Sheldon argues that the cricket the guys hear while eating dinner is a snowy tree cricket based on the temperature of the room and the frequency of chirps; Howard argues that it is an ordinary field cricket.  The beginning of their discussion is as follows:

Sheldon: “Based on the number of chirps per minute, and the ambient temperature in this room, it is a snowy tree cricket.”

Howard: “Oh, give me a frickin’ break. How could you possibly know that?”

Sheldon: “In 1890, Amos Dolbear determined that there was a fixed relationship between the number of chirps per minute of the snowy tree cricket and the ambient temperature – a precise relationship that is not present with ordinary field crickets.”

The whole episode revolves around the guys finding the exact genus and species of the cricket, but that is not the importance here. The importance of this clip is the linear relationship between the temperature and the number of chirps per minute of the cricket, which the activity should then be centered around.

EXPLORE:

After showing the short clip, it could be beneficial to show students the Wikipedia link that discusses Dolbear’s Law. Toward the bottom of the page, the relationship is written out in several formats, but there is a basic linear function that students could focus on for the activity.

Assuming students know how to graph linear functions (as stated above, the link is for a lesson the teacher taught before teaching students about $y-$intercepts), I would have students graph Dolbear’s Law on a piece of graph paper. The challenge would be for students to find out what happens when there are variations to the number of chirps of the cricket, the temperature or both to see how the graph changes – specifically where the graph crosses each axis.

EXPLAIN/ELABORATE/EVALUATE:

At this point, students should be able to state what changes they noticed with the graph – specifically where the graph crossed the axes as changes are made to the function. After they have explained what they found, fill in any gaps and correct vocabulary as needed. Basically, teach what little there is left for the lesson. Follow-up by providing extra examples or a worksheet for students to practice before giving them a quiz or test to assess their performance.

## One thought on “Engaging students: Finding x- and y-intercepts”

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.