Day 71: Coordinate Plane Review

6th Grade Math Standards: 6.NS.6 Understand a rational number as a point on the number line. Extend number line diagrams and coordinate axes familiar from previous grades to represent points on the line and in the plane with negative number coordinates. a. Recognize opposite signs of numbers as indicating locations on opposite sides of 0 on the number line; recognize that the opposite of the opposite of a number is the number itself, e.g., –(–3) = 3, and that 0 is its own opposite. b. Understand signs of numbers in ordered pairs as indicating locations in quadrants of the coordinate plane; recognize that when two ordered pairs differ only by signs, the locations of the points are related by reflections across one or both axes. c. Find and position integers and other rational numbers on a horizontal or vertical number line diagram; find and position pairs of integers and other rational numbers on a coordinate plane.

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.

6.G.3 Draw polygons in the coordinate plane given coordinates for the vertices; use coordinates to find the length of a side joining points with the same first coordinate or the same second coordinate. Apply these techniques in the context of solving real-world and mathematical problems.

Objective: Locate a point in the coordinate plane; identify the four quadrants in the coordinate plane; reflect a point in the coordinate plane; create polygons in the coordinate plane; find the distance between two points in the coordinate plane

Agenda:

1. Which one doesn't belong? Number 5
2. QSSQ 
3. Review the coordinate plane reflections homework and exit ticket
4. Pepper
5. Try a couple more reflection problems (back of exit ticket was not done the previous day)
6. Study guide 
7. Peg boards to show what reflections are 

Assessment: The peg boards; back of exit tickets; pepper

Glass Half-Full: I lit a fire in the students regarding their lack of effort in the reflection problems. I was fine with them struggling on some of the theory questions on the homework, but the fact that they did not highlight demonstrated a weakness in their effort. Our quote of the day dealt with Elizabeth Spiegel who is known as the toughest and best chess coach in the country for students in the middle school grades. In the book How Children Succeed, she was extremely critical of a person on her team who took only two seconds to make a move. The quote and the process for learning reflections were well correlated and students got the message with my own coach like tone regarding their low efforts.

Regrets: The exit tickets demonstrated that students would struggle with the homework. Some of the homework questions would have been better utilized as classwork. For instance students were asked if points are reflected across both axes if the new points are (-x, -y) if they started out as (x, y). This was something completely over the heads of all but about three of my students. Yet in explaining it, students were interested in knowing more about this topic. It got to the point where one students asked me about reflecting across the line y = x to take a point and move to quadrants with one reflection (she of course did not use those exact words, but still...).