Sunday, October 4, 2015

Slopes and the Coordinate Plane

Active, Cold, Female, Girl, Mountain  There are several ways to introduce slope but I discovered this great video again courtesy of Sarah Hagan which is simple, cute and has all the elements to interest students and help them remember.  The video is The Slope Dude.  There is also one on youtube but I do not have access to youtube at work yet, so I linked to the teacher tube version.

I plan it to show it in my Algebra 1 class later this week.  I hope it helps them remember slopes.  It will provide an introduction for the topic and will lead nicely into the idea that there are positive numbers, negative numbers, zeros and undefined associated with the slopes.

In addition, MathForum has a lovely unit called Chameleon Graphing with Sam the chameleon. It works on iPads and it provides a wonderful introduction to the coordinate plane, lines and slopes and a history of the coordinate plane.  It is such a nice introduction that takes students through the coordinate plane step by step. 

Then you reinforce knowledge of the coordinate plane using the Plane coordinate app to start and Descartes Dots to create more complex pictures while giving them lots of practice time on graphing. 

So teaching this unit means, I'll start with the Chameleon Graphing, the apps, then more Chameleon Graphing for slope, the Slope Dude, and practice.  Inbetween, I'll have them working on their interactive notebook.  Thank you to Josh Fisher, Sarah Hagan, and others who gave me what I needed to create this unit in time to try it out in my class.  Thank you all.