Lesson Activities: Grade 12 Calculus & Vectors

Lesson Activities: Grade 12 Calculus & Vectors

Calculus and Vectors was one of my favorite courses in high school because of how many real-world applications there are in this course.  Calculus is important for students to learn because it is used in a variety of other fields.  i.e. it is used in geography, computer simulations, photography (panoramas), computer games, network visualizations, astronomy (forces & motion), spread of disease, etc.

I think many students are reluctant to take Calculus & Vectors because they believe it is much harder than Advanced Functions, however this is not the case.  Half of the course is for vectors, which does not require any previous knowledge, which allows students a fresh start.  Like all other math courses, students need to be dedicated to practicing the questions provided and working hard to solve the problems to succeed in this course.

I really liked Darren’s lesson activity because he demonstrated real life applications of rate of change, which would help students better connect and understand the mathematics.  I think the Geogebra visual in this lesson would also help aid in student understanding of tangent and secant lines.  During Darren’s activity, we were instructed to place the cut-up solution into their correct placements in the provided charts.  I think this would be a great activity to use because students get to complete it in pairs, which eliminates any unnecessary anxiety. This activity would help students better understand the steps required to find the slope of a secant. 


During Rachal’s presentation, she talked about how students generally struggle with the chain rule in calculus.  For this reason, I think her analogy to a box with items inside it was really creative and would be beneficial for students.   When students are shown various ways of thinking about problems, it helps strengthen their understanding of the math concept being taught.  I think that by using the box analogy, students will be more likely to remember the chain rule and how to use it.   

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