Calculus: Derivative at a Point - Password Search Activity

This is a fun password search activity on finding the first derivative at a given point. Students are given 12 problems. They are asked to find the first derivative of each function and then compute the value of it for a given value of the variable x. The functions included are composite of polynomials, functions involving ratio and radicals of exponential, logarithmic, trigonometric and inverse trigonometric functions. The chain rule and quotient rules are required! Then students look for their answers in two tables and finding the answers they also find a symbol ( between all the small and large alphabetic letters, numbers from 0 to 9, @ and $ symbols) corresponding to each answer. Finally students fill in another table to find the password corresponding to their answers. If students have completed all problems correctly they will find out the password.

Students are given all these symbols as movable pieces so they can drag and drop them into the cells of the table.

I hope you find this activity funny and the problems to be challenging for your students!

*This product is created with Google Slides, but it is uploaded here as a Power Point presentation (so it can be used as a digital drag and drop activity) and in PDF format.