A collection of relevant lessons to supplement your units in Algebra I/II. Mix these lessons into your course to show students the algebraic reasoning behind social issues, public health, the environment, business, sports, and more.

This lesson unit is intended to help teachers assess how well students are able to understand what the different algebraic forms of a quadratic function reveal about the properties of its graphical representation. In particular, the lesson will help teachers identify and help students who have the following difficulties: understanding how the factored form of the function can identify a graphŐs roots; understanding how the completed square form of the function can identify a graphŐs maximum or minimum point; and understanding how the standard form of the function can identify a graphŐs intercept.

This lesson unit is intended to help teachers assess how well students are able to: articulate verbally the relationships between variables arising in everyday contexts; translate between everyday situations and sketch graphs of relationships between variables; interpret algebraic functions in terms of the contexts in which they arise; and reflect on the domains of everyday functions and in particular whether they should be discrete or continuous.

Adult education classrooms are commonly comprised of learners who have widely disparate levels of mathematical problem-solving skills. This is true regardless of what level a student may be assessed at when entering an adult education program or what level class they are placed in. Providing students with differentiated instruction in the form of Push and Support cards is one way to level this imbalance, keeping all students engaged in one high-cognitive task that supports and encourages learners who are stuck, while at the same time, providing extensions for students who move through the initial phase of the task quickly. Thus, all
students are continually moving forward during the activity, and when the task ends, all students have made progress in their journey towards developing conceptual understanding of mathematical ideas along with a productive disposition, belief in one’s own ability to successfully engage with mathematics.

This lesson unit is intended to help teachers assess how well students are able to translate between graphs and algebraic representations of polynomials. In particular, this unit aims to help you identify and assist students who have difficulties in: recognizing the connection between the zeros of polynomials when suitable factorizations are available, and graphs of the functions defined by polynomials; and recognizing the connection between transformations of the graphs and transformations of the functions obtained by replacing f(x) by f(x + k), f(x) + k, -f(x), f(-x).