Students are given a sheet of graph paper and asked to create any picture they want using a minimum of 10 points. They may use only straight lines (no smiley faces allowed!)As simple as the directions are, I knew my students needed examples, so I drew two of them. They also get extremely frustrated when they make the smallest mistake, and constantly beg for extra copies of the same paper, so I gave them two blank graphs to make one picture. I left out the part about having students label each point, as I thought that would make these small graphs too crowded. I used graphs from the free printable graph paper resources I shared a few months ago.
Students label each point, then use the formula to evaluate the slope of each line. Students label the lines as positive, negative, zero, or undefined slope.
You can easily print this document as one double-sided 1/2 size page to save paper: print 2 copies, and turn the second one to the opposite orientation of the original. Then make your copies double sided and cut in the middle.
9 comments:
great activity! i'm at the exact same point you are in algebra I. i may put this one to use tomorrow..
Thanks for the slope activity, I like it! Regarding the student frustration with mistakes . . . I purchased some inexpensive thin marker boards that have a coordinate plane printed on one side--students like them, they think it's a "toy" to use in class, and they are not afraid of messing up. Once they get the concept down & it's time to put it on paper, it's not such a big deal!
Thanks for this fun activity! I'm also trying to come up with interactive activities for each concept I teach and this is perfect!
good stuff. thank you, this is really helpful. i teach algebra and afterschool robotics
our class is here: www.yeacademy.org
Mrs. D: You've come to the right place: review/test prep ideas are probably the type of resource I share most frequently.
Scroll down the right side of the blog and click on "review game," "projects" or "newspapers" under tags and you'll find quite a few to get you started.
Your activity has inspired me to create my own... a battleship game involving slope. I'm in the process of figuring out exactly how I'm going to make it work now. I'm excited! Thanks!
Please share it when you figure it out! I'd love to see it.
Thank you for posting this activity. I needed the students to be able to have a fun, individualistic activity involving slope. This will allow them to be creative (with guidelines) and understand what we're learning without the "textbook" way of doing this.
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