MATHS

UNIT CIRCLE PROJECT

Please find below student reflections from Year 9 ELMs class.

Mariza Pagel

Maths Teacher

On Wednesday 21 May, Year 9 Elms decided to do something different. Instead of boring textbooks and notetaking, we made our unit circle chart. We could use our creative and imaginative minds to create an image with circles to input our chart. While some students drew simple ideas, such as the sun and black holes, others put in their effort and created amazing designs, such as using the clock for the Big Ben as a Unit circle, Minions and many more fascinating ideas. Overall, I believe that lesson helped us think outside the box, use our creativity and understand more about unit circles plus exact values.

Josh Chan & Ruma Lee, Year 9

Throughout our unit on the unit circle, we gained an understanding of how angles and trigonometric values are connected. At first, the concept was a bit confusing, but using different strategies really helped us learn.

One of the most helpful and fun activities we did was using mini whiteboards to play a game. In the game, we were shown an angle or a trig question, and we had to quickly write down the correct value using our knowledge of the unit circle. This helped us improve our speed and accuracy, and it made learning feel more fun.

We also created a poster showing the full unit circle, including degrees, and radians. Making the poster helped me visually understand where the values come from and made it easier to memorise.

A particularly useful trick we learned was how to use our hands to remember the exact trig values for key angles, which made recalling them much simpler during classwork and the test.

Lastly, we took notes and examples throughout the unit, which we often referred back to during classwork and homework. These notes helped me understand tricky topics like reference angles and exact values of trig functions. By the end of the unit, we felt more confident using the unit circle.

Overall, we really enjoyed the different ways we explored the unit circle. The variety of activities made it easier to understand and remember, and we now feel much more confident applying what we’ve learned in future maths problems.

Reana Nanayakkara & Lia Hu, Year 9