Graphing Rational Functions Reference Sheet

When students feel confident they enjoy school. When they enjoy school, they do better. And when they do better, they make a choice to go on to more school. There's a snowball effect that starts with confidence and ends with that struggling student going on to get her PhD. 

To me, confidence is everything, and the importance of memorization is diminishing more and more every day. Even with access to math cheat sheets, my students still need to put in work to understand our difficult Algebra 2 topics. Cheat sheets will never replace this. 

Cheat sheets offer a little boost of confidence that pushes the student to take a risk. Even when the sheet never even leaves a student's binder, just knowing it's there "just in case" is enough.

graphing rational functions cheat sheet

The reference sheet above is for graphing rational functions. The process is a long one, so this cheat sheet offers reminders for each of the steps. 

Before we started graphing, our students were having trouble simplifying rational expressions. After our first quiz it was obvious that I needed to give them more support. So I gave them this simplifying rational expressions flowchart to help explain the steps to take for each problem type.

I love examples as references because being able to follow an example and apply it to a new problem is a skill that can be developed and strengthened in students. This skill comes in handy in college math classes!

This simplifying rational expressions activity is a way to practice simplifying rational expressions. Students have to figure out if they are being asked to add, multiply or divide their rational expressions based on what information is missing.

My friend Kara from Learning Made Radical and I have been collaborating on a set of partner scavenger hunt activities. This one is for simplifying rational expressions. 

In these partner scavenger hunts, problems are the same but answers match, encouraging collaboration. 

In addition to cheat sheets, I hang math word walls in my classroom. My Algebra 2 word wall keeps growing as more teachers email asking for additions. This parent graph for rational functions was a recent addition. 

Here's a "2 truths and a lie" rational functions error analysis activity where students are presented with 3 statements about rational functions and need to figure out which is wrong (the "lie"). Students then correct each lie on their answer sheets.

You can download the graphing rational functions cheat sheet free here in my Google Drive.