Day 72: Coordinate Plane Quiz and Battleship

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. QSSQ 
2. Quiz on coordinate plane
3. Battleship brackets 

Assessment: Coordinate plane quiz

Glass Half-Full: Students in two of my three classes have been bothering me since the start of the unit to play Battleship. Today we did it. In a unique way compared to what I have done in the past, I set up brackets and had winning students play against other winning students and losing students play against other losing students. I explained the format before the quiz and they were all fired up. As a result of the students playing Battleship and not needing my direction or cueing them to task, I was able to grade the quizzes and call up individual students to clarify errors on this quiz or past assessments.

Regrets: There was a question that I had students find the distance between two points on a coordinate plane in which there was a trapezoid. We had gotten practice with finding the distance between two points, but always with peg boards or at least by looking at those points on a coordinate plane. I never left the students to find the answer with just giving them the coordinates as was the case on this quiz. Consequently, I passed out graph paper and told students to plot the trapezoid first to make finding the distance easier. I would like to remove this scaffold in the future though and will have to teach it in order to do so.