Desmos is one of the tools that I frequently use as an online instructor. This article will demonstrate two examples of free Desmos activities that I utilize regularly in my classroom. I’ll explain the premise of each activity, what I use each activity for, and the pros and cons of each.
1. Marbleslides
Premise: Write functions to collect stars. This is my favourite Desmos activity.
The first slide of the Marbleslides activity
Purpose: I use this as an introduction to teaching transformations of parabolas in pre-calculus 11 and pre-calculus 12. Later on, I use this to teach transformations of periodic functions, rational functions, exponential functions, and radical functions in pre-calculus 12.
A middle-level slide showing exponential functions
A later periodic functions slide, in which students are asked to create their own functions to capture the stars
Pros: This activity can be scaled for difficulty nicely, and students enjoy the game aspect of it. You can also use the website to track students’ progress through the activities and pause their progress if necessary. It’s also possible to anonymize and highlight student solutions.
This is the teacher dashboard. At point one, you can see the students are “trapped” on slides two through eight. There’s also a pause function in the top left. At point two, you can see a list of anonymized names, which can also be toggled. At point three, you can see that “Jamie” hasn’t been successful on the sixth step and might need help. You can click on the indicated box to see what his screen specifically looks like.
This is a photo of Jamie’s screen. In it, we can see his function needs to be phase shifted left to collect the stars, and we can deduce a misunderstanding in horizontal translation.
Cons: There aren’t a lot of downsides to this activity, other than that they’re not endlessly repeatable for each student. There is free play at the end, but this activity usually can only be used once.
2. Interpreting Graphs of Functions
Premise: Help students relate graphs, tables, and word scenarios.
An early slide in the activity
A middle slide in the activity
Purpose: I use this in Math 10 to help students get better at matching graphs to word scenarios and understand the concept of slope a little bit better.
Pros: Like most Desmos activities, I like the teacher tracking capabilities, as well as the ability to pause and control the pace of the lesson. This activity also utilizes card sorting, and student responses can be evaluated quickly.
In this image, we can see that all the students have matched the question accurately except for Talitha. This is a live evaluation tool, so the squares change from grey (unmatched) to orange (wrong) to blue (correct) as they match.
Cons: The main downside of this activity is that the full lesson is very lengthy. I usually cut my students off at around slide 20, as this is a more challenging activity.
I hope this has been a helpful breakdown of these two Desmos activities. You’ll find links to them below.
- Marbleslides: Parabolas (to find others, just search for “Marbleslides” and “Desmos” on Google, and you’ll find them all)
- Interpreting Graphs of Functions
Author
Steven Brock
Brock, MS Chemistry. He works at West Coast Adventist School teaching high school math, science and technology. Has been teaching online for 5 years and brick-and-mortar for 4 years before that.