Desmos Alternate Assessment Project 2021 Conics and Parent Functions

One of my favorite projects to do with my Honors Algebra 2 students is the Desmos alternate assessment that brings together everything students learned in the first semester. Students know how to graph all of the parent functions and conics, and their task was to create a drawing on Desmos that puts it all together. I love this project because it incorporates student identities and interests, which is essential according to Self-Determination Theory and Culturally Responsive Teaching. This year, I shared all projects in a Padlet so that students could easily see everyone else's. Students had to use their knowledge of domain and range to limit the functions and also had to think about how to create the perfect size and shape by, for example, figuring out the center, "a," and "b" for an ellipse. Many incorporated different colors and animations. 

Here are some of my favorites this year:

Here is the Padlet of all of the projects.

Here are my students' 2020 projects, 2019 projects, and 2018 projects. Here is the project outline, based on a project by Mr. Sumerton. If you do incorporate this project, please be sure to include an Honor statement that attests to the fact that students have not copied any of the equations or pictures. I am blown away by the number of projects I see online posted by their teachers that are blatantly copied. Please be aware of this; if there is no statement or discussion about this, students may be tempted to take the easy way out. The critical part of this activity is each individual's unique learning opportunity to create something from scratch using math. They are so proud of themselves! As they should be!!