Karen's Tricks of the Trade
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This is a list of cool, fun, goofy things I do in the classroom to make math easy and fun. I'm sure you all have a bunch of unique things you do too... I'd love to see them posted on our forums! I'm always looking for new material.

Recently, I've been specializing in teaching Precalculus and first semester Calculus... Some of these, however, can be applied to any topic and at any level.

I warn you though... I'm goofy and unconventional. After reading some of these, you might ask three questions:

1) Does she still command the proper respect with all this goofiness?
2) Does she maintain control of her students?
3) Does she have time to cover the material?

The answer to all three is YES! I stand at 5'1" and look like one of the students... I've NEVER had a problem. I think the fact that I give a 45 minute dissertation the first day of school on the perils of cheating that would make a police officer break down and cry might have something to do with it.  8-) As for "covering all the material"... these things seem to get students to learn the material faster.

All of this stuff IS copyrighted... You are free to use any of it in the classroom though. If you tell a colleague about it, please tell him/her about Coolmath too!

Karen's trick of the trade topic How to Start the Year with SUCCESS:  Attitude is EVERYTHING!
(This is the final key to getting all this to work -- and making your job much more pleasant!)
Karen's trick of the trade topic My First-Day Speech
Karen's trick of the trade topic My List of Motivational Quotes
Karen's trick of the trade topic How to Keep Your Students' Trust
(Think about this one...  Can you learn well from someone you don't trust?)
Karen's trick of the trade topic Pierre the Mountain Climbing Ant
Karen's trick of the trade topic Really Goofy Extrema Word Problems (Yes, this is where I maximize the psychological well-being of a grasshopper.)
Karen's trick of the trade topic Music Before Class
Karen's trick of the trade topic Monkey Math - Specifically, monkey proofs and monkey algebra
Karen's trick of the trade topic Nike Math - Specifically, Nike integrals and Nike factoring
Karen's trick of the trade topic Take an Electric Guitar to Class (Yes, you can teach them something with it!)
Karen's trick of the trade topic Graphing Rational Functions - Throw away that laborious A-H technique in the text book! I can do it with 2 things and 2 sentences! (I'm sending you over to my Coolmath Algebra area for this one.)