7. Patterns on the Home Screen
The 8-line Home Screen of TI-73 and TI-8X calculators is a perfect tool for displaying expressions and allowing students to discover mathematical rules for themselves. For the following examples involving integer operations, consider displaying the given expressions using an overhead calculator and providing students with a handout of the same expressions to record resulting sums/differences/products/quotients.
Addition of Signed Numbers:
- Provide students with numerous examples.
- Encourage students to predict outputs before you display the actual sums.
- Continue providing examples until students can verbally generate the rule.
- Then have students write the rule in their own words.
- Note: For expressions involving negative integers, you may wish to enter values inside parentheses.
Rule 1: 2 + 5, 3 + 8, 7 + 4, …
Rule 2: -2 + -5, -3 + -8, -7 + -4, …
Rule 3: 2 + -5, -2 + 5, 3 + -8, -3 + 8, 7 + -4, -7 + 4, …
Other Integer Operations:
Repeat for expressions involving other integer operations.
Powers and Roots:
This same process can be used to introduce the definition of exponents and roots.
Parting Thoughts:
So, give it a try. Please share your experiences and/or other topics that can be introduced/reinforced using the capacity of the 8-line Home Screen.
