DESMOS Activities

The DESMOS interactive lessons allow students to manipulate equations and graphs to discover the features of quadratic functions. The teacher opens the activity with a class code and has the ability to follow each students progress individually on a class dashboard. The dashboard can be made anonymous (DESMOS assigns everyone a famous mathematician's name!) and the class can see how others are answering. 

Will It Hit the Hoop?

Great for an introduction! Students look at an image of a basketball player and the first second of the basketball's parabolic motion and then predict whether he makes the shot. Students then apply a quadratic graph overlay onto the image to re-answer whether they think the basketball will go in. 

Polygraph: Parabolas

Use this activity at different points throughout the unit and watch as their vocabulary changes and they have better knowledge to ask and answer questions. Student are matched with each other and one chooses a parabola from 16 options. The other student asks yes/no questions to eventually eliminate and choose which one their teammate chose. 

Match My Parabola

This activity corresponds with the vertex form and translations. Students have to manipulate the equations to line up their equations over the corresponding dots. They can use trial-and-error to practice the ways a vertex is shifted based on adding or subtracting different numbers.