Sample class notes: end behaviour of rationals

I think it’s time to look at a sample of my class notes! Here’s my grade 11 class on Thursday (notes are from Period 7, my second time teaching the lesson). We are covering the end behaviour of rational functions.

These are pretty standard notes — I start with a prime time task to kick things off, then go through quick announcements and a unit agenda. The class notes follow — I take the class through these, explaining, questioning and having them try out the examples.

This was an interesting class since the students didn’t understand at first the way the tables of values were set up. Once this was cleared up they quickly grasped what was happening. Then they really liked the shortcuts (which come from the book, not me)… I think they may have seen something similar in grade 10.

I have been thinking and discussing with my partner teacher Elena why we don’t teach them how to find slant asymptotes; apparently they have not been taught in grade 10 how to do polynomial division. A travesty, I’d say. Perhaps we can change it for future years so they can properly graph rational functions with slant asymptotes.

Check out the notes: PC11 6-3 Rational End Behaviour notes