Over the summer I was working on curriculum for a new course, Algebraic Reasoning, that I am teaching a section of this year.  I knew that I wanted to do lots of activities with these students, who typically struggle with math.  I came across an activity that mentioned the game Hedbanz.  Unfortunately, I don’t remember where I saw the activity, so I don’t know who to give credit to.

I have never played the game Hedbanz, but the general gist is that you put a card in a headband and must ask yes/no questions to figure out what is on your card.

I bought some twelve packs of headbands from the dollar store and created cards for function transformations.  My plan was that students would work in pairs.  Student A would tell Student B the parent function and the transformations from the parent function so that Student B could write the equation that was in his/her headband, and vice versa.

After graphing transformations of linear, absolute value, and quadratic functions, I gave a quiz on transformations.  The quizzes were terrible.  I had to rethink how I would use the planned activity.

I made new cards (printed on Avery business cards for convenience).  This time I put the transformations on the back of the card.  So now, Student A would tell Student B the a, b, h, and k parameters for the transformations.  Then Student B would identify the transformations for his/her card, and vice versa.

The activity worked wonderfully.  My inclusion teacher and I were able to spot check pairs of students to make sure that the students were correctly identifying a, b, h, and k for their partner.

At the end of class, I gave a requiz on transformations.  They were so much better.  This activity is definitely a keeper.  In addition, I may use the activity next year in my Algebra 2 class, as I had originally planned.