The Coordinate Plane

Before winter break I introduced the Coordinate Plane to my Algebra class.  Let's just say working with a number line was challenging enough for a few of my students but now we combined two number lines together to form a Coordinate Plane was pretty unheard of by some of them.  Trying to explain this to a few of them resulted in me getting looks like I had grew horns and shot fire out of my mouth.  We pushed through and in the end I became Ms. O again.

 Students were given a double sided page where they cut on the dotted lines and folded on the solid ones.  It created a four flap foldable where each flap was one of the four quadrants.  I added the font so all they had to do was color it in.

When you open up each of the flaps it reveals that quadrant on a coordinate plane.  On the inside of the flap is where students filled out information about that specific quadrant.












In the middle was grid paper where the students created the two number lines and labeled the different parts of the coordinate plane. We then practiced plotting and naming points in each of the quadrants.

For the right side of their notebooks I gave them two graphs, one blank and one with points.  The top graph (blank) is where I gave them points and they had to plot them.  The bottom graph (with points) is where the students had to practice naming them.

For homework that night I have them those fun sheets where they plot the points and it forms animals or easily recognizable objects.  The kids loved these because they knew right way if they did it right or not.  I found a few on MathCrush.

Mathcrush.com

It was pretty interesting to see what some of my students came up with when they returned.  A few had some deformed fish or birds, so I knew they needed more practice but everyone else knew what to do and was ready to move on.

Here are the links to the foldable, it's two pages that you print off double sided.  Everything lines up correctly.  Enjoy!

Coordinate Plane Interior
Coordinate Plane Exterior