Years ago I found this short "Sloping Letters" activity which asks students to view the letters of the alphabet as line segments with positive, negative, zero or undefined slopes. I liked the idea because it makes students focus only on visually identifying slopes, which is a skill that makes all the follow-up easier.
As we were revisiting slope last week, I took that idea and expanded it: I had my students break down every letter of the alphabet and label the slopes of each segment. I call it Alphabet Slope.
First, we did quick notes on the four types of slope mentioned above. The way I explained it, depending on how you look at certain letters, you can break them down in multiple ways: for example, the letter D could be made up of an undefined slope and a non-linear piece as seen above, or you could include two small zero slope segments on the top and bottom. I didn't go as far as have students turn the letters into blocky versions that had no non-linear parts, but you could very well do that with your kids.
The Sloping Letters activity is a great wrap-up for the Alphabet Slope activity. It forces the students to look back at their work and think about the pieces.
If they've studied slope before, this will take about 25-35 minutes, but for students looking at it for the first time, it might take a bit longer.
Alphabet Slope activity (PDF)
Sloping Letters follow-up activity
Do you have other ideas about helping students visually identify slopes, or to think about slope in different ways? Share them in the comments.
5 comments:
I love, love, love this idea. I'm student teaching, and my students are just getting ready to start slope. So this post came at the perfect time!
How cute! I just shared it on my facebook page. :)
This is perfect for my math strategies class goals this week. Thank you! The Algebra 1 teacher at our school has a poster of a skier going uphill, downhill, on level, and then falling off a cliff to show all the different kinds of slopes. Students always remember this poster when they get to my Algebra 2 two years later.
What timing! This is exactly where I am with my Algebra 1A students! I started by having them draw their first initial in block letters. Parameters: all 4 quadrants, between 15 -20 points: points first, writing the coordinates of each point, then connecting them with straight lines. This is a great extension, because now I have the letters to use under the document camera! I can have them work in teams to identify the ones they did themselves! Slope triangles are always effective.
Amy
Awww man this is perfect! I just taught slope, but I will definitely keep this is in my cache for when I revisit this.
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