A few years ago I decided I wanted to create a fun activity to round out our writing and graphing quadratic equations units. After some brainstorming I came up with the idea of having the students create their own Angry Birds scene using quadratic equations.
The rules are fairly simple, and give the students room for creativity while assessing how well they can . Students are given a rubric at the beginning of the project so they know what is required from the beginning.
Students must find the equation of four quadratic functions where they select the following that will be on the parabola:
- three points
- a vertex and a point
- x-intercepts and a point
- another of the above
It is important to note that one of the points they select must be the slingshot location, otherwise when they graph the equation their graph will not go through the slingshot.
From these equations students must graph their equation, find the vertex, axis of symmetry, y-intercept, focus, and diretrix. Here are a few examples of the scenes my students created!
Do you have the fifth version of the answer key
What do you mean the fifth version of the answer key? I don’t really have a specific answer key since the students are allowed to make their own equations, I grade based on the rubric. It does take some time to grade as I go through and make sure that their work is correct, but the kids always have so much fun with it.