After students are familiar with the Pythagorean identities and with angle sum identities, group students and ask them to derive a formula for double angles Sin(2θ), Cos(2θ), Tan(2θ). Here are my three thoughts:įor precalculus students in a regular or advanced class, have them derive this formula in groups. I want to provide some variety for opportunities to make this an engaging opportunity for Precalculus students and some Calculus students. How could you as a teacher create an activity or project that involves your topic? His topic, from Precalculus: deriving the double angle formulas for sine, cosine, and tangent. This student submission comes from my former student Morgan Mayfield. I plan to share some of the best of these ideas on this blog (after asking my students’ permission, of course). Instead, I asked my students to think about three different ways of getting their students interested in the topic in the first place. In other words, the point of the assignment was not to devise a full-blown lesson plan on this topic. In my capstone class for future secondary math teachers, I ask my students to come up with ideas for engaging their students with different topics in the secondary mathematics curriculum.

.cdf files for trigonometry