Overview

Key words/ideas: ratios, proportions, similar triangles, sine, cosine, tangent

Purpose: This unit is designed to help tutors who teach courses that use trigonometric (trig) formulae (e.g., sine, cosine and tangent functions). It develops teaching activities for teaching problem solving with trig formulae to promote learner understanding. Since trig functions represent ratios between the elements of a triangle, they provide a prime opportunity to develop learners’ proportional thinking skills.

Tutor outcomes: By the end of the unit tutors should be able to:

1. Use experiential learning activities to develop learners’ understanding of the meaning of trig ratios;

2. Develop lessons in their teaching context that help learners to solve problems using proportional reasoning.