Day 55: Coordinate Plane Hands On

6th Grade Math Standards: 6.NS.8 Solve real-world and mathematical problems by graphing points in all four quadrants of the coordinate plane. Include use of coordinates and absolute value to find distances between points with the same first coordinate or the same second coordinate.

The Learning Objective: Find the distance between two points with either the same x or y coordinate.

Quote of the Day: “Many educators think that lowering their standards will give students success experiences, boost their self-esteem, and raise their achievement. It comes from the same philosophy as the overpraising of students’ intelligence."

Agenda:

1. Jumpstart & Collect WQ 
2. Review the homework from the previous class. We highlighted how 0 as one of the coordinates means that the point is on an axis with this homework review.
3. Hands on Coordinate Plane with pegs and a coordinate grid that students could touch instead of write with. 
4. Pass out today's homework
5. Cartesian Cartoon

The Assessment: I partnered students up and gave each partnership a board with orange and blue pegs. I walked around the room to make sure students were doing the task. Here were the details of what students were asked to do:

1. Place an orange peg at the origin. 
2. Place a blue peg at (4, 3).
3. Place a blue peg at (-4, 3)
4. Place an orange peg at (-4, -3)
5. Based on the pattern, what quadrant am I going to ask you to place the next peg? I called on a student for this answer. 
6. What will be the coordinates of the fourth point? I called on a student for this answer.
7. I went through several different partnerships to ask what shape had been created. Some groups said a square while others said a rectangle. 
8. I asked for specific characteristics that a square has. When we got to the characteristic of equal sides, I asked the students how we could find if the shape had equal sides.
9. The students were then asked to measure the distance between the blue peg. The answers I received were mostly wrong. Many said seven because they did not count the last "jump." Thus I counted with them holding up a board of my own and used the analogy of a board game (they still play board games right?).
10. Then we measured the distance from orange to blue peg. It was clear that the students had learned from their previous mistake as all partnerships could answer the distance from one edge to the other. 
11. I asked students if it was a square or rectangle?
12. I asked students to graph the point (-2, 0)
13. I asked students to graph the point (0, -5)
14. I asked the students what quadrant these two points were in.
15. I asked students to graph 4 points that had an absolute value in the y-coordinate of 2. 
16. I asked students to graph 4 points that had an absolute value in the y-coordinate of 2 and that appeared in the third quadrant.
17. I asked students to place a peg at a point so that it was not in a quadrant and the x and y coordinate could not be equal to zero. They were stumped until they one of their classmates shared with us why this was impossible. 

Homework: Coordinate plane practice continued. Students were given more than ten minutes to start this in class.

My Glass Half-Full Take: The 17 steps outlined above were not originally on the plan for today. I was just going to pick a couple of points and call it a day. During curriculum planning time though one of the colleagues shared her line of questions. I liked it. From there I made my own tweaks throughout the day, and by the last class, the questions were differentiated and engaging to my satisfaction.

One Thing to Do Differently: Before students get the Cartesian Cartoon, I need to go over two things. First, they should cross out each point as they plot it. Second, they need to connect the dots each time they plot a dot.

Link of the Day: In this blog post a math teacher argues that immediate feedback isn't always the best type of feedback.