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Arrange students in groups of 2. Tell them that in this activity, they will sort some cards into categories of their choosing. When they sort the graphs, they should work with their partner to come up with categories. Distribute pre-cut slips to each group.
Use Collect and Display to create a shared reference using students’ developing mathematical language. Collect the language students use to describe the differences between even and odd functions. Display words and phrases such as: "reflection," "rotation," "about the origin," "across the - or -axis," "end behavior," "ends going the same way," "ends going opposite ways," and "odd or even number of zeros."
Your teacher will give you a set of cards that show graphs.
Pause here for a class discussion.
If students focus too much on identifying specific points on the graph to use to make their categories, consider saying:
“Tell me more about why you put these cards into a category together.”
“How could looking at the overall shapes of the graphs help you sort the cards in other ways?”
Direct students’ attention to the reference created using Collect and Display. Ask students to share their categories and how they sorted their graphs. Choose as many different types of categories as time allows, but ensure that one set of categories distinguishes between graphs of even functions and graphs of odd functions. Invite students to borrow language from the display as needed. As they respond, update the reference to include additional phrases.
It is possible students will think of graphs of odd functions as ones where a rotation using the origin as the center of rotation results in the same graph. While it is true that this type of rotation appears the same as successive reflections of the graph across both axes, focus the conversation on thinking in terms of reflections since the function notation students will use to describe odd functions, , algebraically describes reflections.
Next, display the graphs of the even functions next to the odd functions. Tell students that functions whose graphs look the same when reflected across the -axis are called even functions. Functions whose graphs look the same when reflected across both axes are called odd functions.
Keep students in the same groups. If students do not already have their slips from the previous activity arranged into two groups, one for graphs of even functions and one for graphs of odd functions, ask them to do so now. Distribute pre-cut slips.
Continue using Collect and Display to add to the shared reference using students’ developing mathematical language. Collect the language students use to describe the differences between coordinates in even and odd functions. Display words and phrases such as: “when the function is even,” “when the function is odd,” “negative,” “opposite,” and “absolute value.”
Your teacher will give you a set of cards to go with the cards you already have.
The goal of this discussion is for students to move from observations about specific even and odd functions to generalizing things that are true for all even functions and for all odd functions.
Direct students' attention to the reference created using Collect and Display. Ask students to share observations about even and odd functions. Invite students to borrow language from the display as needed and update the reference to include additional phrases as they respond. As students respond, encourage them to determine whether this is true about a specific even or odd function, but not all of them, or this is true about even or odd functions in general. It is acceptable at this time if students do not consider all cases, such as piecewise or discontinuous functions, but they should be making some categorical observations.
If time allows, assign groups to write a single sentence describing even or odd functions that summarizes one of the lists.
Sample observations:
Even functions:
Odd functions: