Reflection: Curricular Microteaching

This microteaching lesson was the first one in which we looked at the BC curriculum, and as such it felt very applicable to a real secondary school classroom. My group decided on tackling the transformation portion of Pre-calculus 12. In particular, we looked at the effect of transforming f(x) to f(ax). We felt like this aspect of transformations would be the best as students historically have trouble with this, as many believe that increasing the coefficient a would widen the graph by that same factor.

We initially looked at the quadratic function y = x^2 and the sinusoidal function y = sin(x). We later came to a group decision to focus our efforts solely on the sinusoidal function, at the advice given by Susan, on the basis of time constraints. We felt that the sinusoidal function would be more illuminating in demonstrating the effect of changing a, as the quadratic function could be argued that you are stretching/compressing vertically (e.g. y = (2x)^2 = 4x^2, so you could say that the graph was stretched by a factor of 4 vertically, rather than compressed by a factor of 2 horizontally.)

We also wanted to represent this transformation using different methods. I made an interactive plot that could switch between sinusoidal functions with different values of a, to display the transformation graphically. I asked students the similarities and differences as a means to engage them and get them thinking about how this particular transformation changes different aspects of its base function. I felt like I did a decent job at having them be active participants in the lesson.

Some things I would work on for future lessons would be the incorporation of applications to make it more apparent to students as to why they should be interested in learning this material. In addition, general whiteboard layout and deciding on having the projector screen up or down with respect to students and their potential issues seeing the board are also things I will look out for.