#MTBoS30: Inverse Trig Functions and Solving Trig Equations

I accidentally killed two birds with one stone in this lesson. Meg @megcraig mentioned that graphing inverse trig functions was a great follow up to graphing trig functions. I cut my unit in half and we had just finished graphing sec/csc and tan/cot.

I had no idea what I was getting into.

So of course I MtBoS'ed it.

This lesson is combination of Meg + Shireen + Johnathan.

We started with labeling our unit circles with tangent values, then the basic concept of any inverse, then me verbally asking for inverses from the unit circle.

Next we did Shireen's patty paper lesson.

I used part of Meg's NTM to explain the restricted domains and practice finding the first inverse value from the unit circle.

Then I used Johnathan's idea of graphing two equal equations and finding their intersections. We used Desmos to get the graph and the intersection points, then sketch. This helped students see there are multiple answers which led us to verify them by solving algebraically.

I hope you read their posts to get the full effect of my lesson but here are what my INB pages {the pocket is for their patty paper} looked like:

Here's the file:

Then I made a handout that had them side-by-side graph and solve each problem and write their answers in both degrees and radians. These problems came straight from Johnathan's post so that I could make sure I was doing them right.

And my powerpoint if needed:

Good luck!