Day 56: Coordinate Plane Study Guide & Cartesian Cartoon

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: Locate a point in a coordinate plane. Graph points in a coordinate plane. Give the distance between two points that share an axis in a coordinate plane.

Quote of the Day: “Thinking of yourself as the best, is one of the biggest reasons successful people stumble and fail.” - Rick Pitino

Agenda:

1. Jumpstart with mixed numbers and the four major fraction operations
2. Coordinate plane homework review
3. Coordinate plane study guide
4. Journals
5. Cartesian Cartoons

The Assessment: The students accurately drawing their cartoon assessed their ability to graph points in all four quadrants.

The journals was an assessment to me of how the class was going. I asked to write about how they wanted the start of trimester two to go since we have a quiz tomorrow and their cartesian cartoons are counting as a quiz grade. I also asked one thing that I'm doing well to help them learn and one thing that I can do better. I hope they weren't as hard on me as I am on them, but it will keep me humble and help me get better.

The study guides only took some students about five minutes. I worked with a few students during this time, so I was not able to assess all of them. We did go over it as a class when it was done.

Finally I assessed a couple problems from the homework in going around the room. I'm pretty confident students know the quadrants, the vocabulary, graphing points, and plotting points. They have a harder time when it comes to polygons or even circles in a coordinate plane. Finding a distance is something that the students continue to improve upon. It was a smart move in the end to give students not only a problem on the study guide for finding the distance of two points, but also giving them another problem like this immediately after going over it.

Homework: Finishing the cartesian cartoon and prepping for tomorrow's quiz.

My Glass Half-Full Take: The cartesian cartoon is an excellent way to drill without making students think they are being drilled on a skill. I also really liked the journal activity as students showed me how much they were writing. I haven't actually read the content, but the timing of it is perfect since students have a clean slate with a new trimester just underway today.

One Thing to Do Differently: The students were very insecure that their cartesian cartoons were inaccurate. I wish that they were this insecure about all their work and so willing to check on their progress. They kept going up to the pictures of finished products instead of trusting their instincts. This led to them not making as much progress as they could. I wish I had told them from the outset not to worry too much about how the final product looked until they were halfway done plotting the dots. The students worked on this for a full block in the second part of class, and while a few students finished most still had work to do tonight.

Link of the Day: A number that when divided by the product of its digits gives you three and if you add 18 to it, it is inverted. Solution here from the 1991 film Little Man Tate.