I've been trying since last week to get my sixth graders to understand what ordered pairs are and how to graph them. I've tried using Geogebra app which has worked for my Pre-Algebra students, but didn't really reach the students who were having problems. So yesterday we tried to play Kahoot to help students with the process. Didn't work too well - many focused too much on the points and what place they were and became discouraged.
After looking across the many math blogs, I decided to go with playing cards and a grid. Student will work in groups of three with 18 playing cards. They will take turns drawing two cards - the first card will be the x-coordinate, the second card will be the y-coordinate. They will write the numbers and the ordered pair on a chart than graph the point on a coordinate plane. Lastly they have to state which quadrant that point is in.
CONCLUSION:
They LOVED the activity! The students, especially the girls, stated they enjoyed using the cards for an activity. I said we could use them to play a version of WAR using integer operations. They were excited! A couple of the boy groups had difficulty following directions due to talking while I was going over the procedures. Today we're going to further their knowledge by asking them to find the distance between two points on the graph. I've already discussed with some of the accelerated students about the distance formula (and Pythagorean Theorem) so it's going to be interesting to see what they do. We're also going to talk about reflection of points over the x- and y-axis. Can't wait!
Here's a few examples of their work:
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