134 Awesome Desmos Classroom Activities

Education, Mathematics
August 4, 2022

Desmos classroom activities are digital experiences that help students learn algebra, geometry, and advanced mathematics by modeling and using multiple representations.

Desmos classroom activities are terrific for teachers to help students visualize their learning concepts. They have some incredibly extraordinary capabilities. Furthermore, Desmos activities are a great way to host interactive notes in the classroom and fun to make card sorting or graph-based assignments. But you should keep in my that students must be able to sign in to Desmos so that an educator can view and track their progress!

Why should teachers use Desmos Classroom Activities?

Desmos encourages students to practice their math skills and play with math to show their creativity. Kids can type in any number of math expressions and see the results right away as graphs on the page. Graphs can be turned into complex and realistic drawings by adding different colors and shapes.

I have curated every single Desmos activity and categorized them for you! If you still need more sources for your students, you should check out 70+ Awesome Websites for Teachers to Teach Math.

Marcellus the Giant

This activity will help your students understand the definition of a proportional relationship. They'll create a giant and then make sure all of his features are proportional. They'll see the representation of his proportions on a graph and manipulate the graph to see the giant change dynamically....

What’s My Number?

In this activity students develop their intuition for mean absolute deviation. We start with a simple question: "Can you guess my number?" Students submit a guess, receive feedback (too low, too high), and continue revising until they guess the target number. Students then analyze parallel dot plots showing their and their classmates' guesses over time in order to make connections between the "spread" of a given dot plot and the mean absolute deviation for that data set....

Polygraph: Shaded Rectangles

This Custom Polygraph is designed to spark vocabulary-rich conversations about fractions and part-to-whole relationships. Key vocabulary that may appear in student questions includes: shaded, unshaded, fraction, part, whole, numerator, denominator, simplified, and equivalent/equal to. In the early rounds of the game, students may notice number features from the list above, even though they may not use those words to describe them. That’s where you can step in. After most students have played 2-3 games, consider taking a short break to...

Mocha Modeling: Starbucks Locations

In this activity, students build a model to describe the relationship between the number of Starbucks locations in the United States and the number of years since 1992. Students then use that model to make predictions about the number of locations in 2015 and beyond. Students will also interpret the features of the graph in context. In the process, students learn that not all rapid growth is exponential growth, and that another function type (logistic) may provide a better fit...

Screens for Checking Understanding

This activity offers starter screens that you can copy and paste into your activities. These screens are intended to help you check students' understanding in the middle or at the end of a lesson. To copy a screen, open the screen you want to copy and then press cmd+c (on Mac) or ctrl+c (on Chromebook or Windows). Then paste the screen into your activity by pressing cmd+v (on Mac) or ctrl+v (on Chromebook or Windows)....

Turtle Crossing

In this lesson, students make connections between several turtle-crossing scenarios and the graphs that represent these scenarios....

Strength in Numbers

In this activity, students complete three rounds of estimation challenges. After each initial estimate, they view a dot plot of their classmates' responses and decide whether (and how) to revise their estimate. Common strategies include "moving toward the middle" (i.e., median). At the end of the activity, students consider a new (heavily skewed) dot plot and decide whether the mean or median is a better measure of center. Note: This activity works best with 10 or more students....

Card Sort: Exponentials

In this activity, students practice what they've learned about exponential functions by matching equations to properties of the graphs they will produce. They will then use their knowledge of transforming exponential functions to pair equations with graphs....

Classy Cats

In this activity, students will begin to see a set of data points as a single thing that can be analyzed, not just a bunch of disconnected points. Students learn that we can sometimes model the relationship between two variables with a line, and they continue to analyze the connections between the scatter plot and the line by comparing individual points....

Compound Inequalities on the Number Line

In this activity, students explore compound inequalities and make connections among multiple representations (including algebraic expressions, verbal statements, number line graphs, and solution sets)....