Here is activity #2 for the ordered pair cards I posted in my last blog post.  (If you missed my post on a fun, free activity for teaching slope, you can read it here).

This is an activity on graphing in the coordinate plane that gets kids up and moving around the room:

• Give each student an ordered pair card when they walk in the room (free download link is below)
• Give each student a worksheet (free download link is below)
• Have them walk around the room and find someone who has an ordered pair that meets the given description. Once they find someone with an ordered pair that “works”, they need to write down that person’s ordered pair and have them sign their paper.  (The signatures ensure that the students are actually walking around the room to find ordered pairs and not just copying from a friend).  They are only allowed to have a student sign their paper once, so they will need to find 9 different people to sign their paper in order to answer all of the questions.
• After they have gathered all of their ordered pairs and signatures, they need to plot all of the points they found on the coordinate plane on the bottom of the page, labeling each of them with the given letter and their own ordered pair with a star.

I think that this lesson will be a nice way to break the monotony of simply having students graph points on a coordinate plane and write coordinates for given points.  It also makes students think more about their points than they would if they were just graphing them.  They need to think about their x-coordinate, y-coordinate, and what quadrant/axis it is located in for this activity.

Click the image below to download the ordered pairs cards:

Click the image below to download the “Coordinate Plane Find Someone Who…” worksheet:

Also, if you are looking for a way to challenge your higher level students with the coordinate plane, you may want to check out my Coordinate Plane Challenge Task Card Activity.  It consists of higher level thinking task cards and a riddle sheet and is a good way to challenge students who find coordinate plane graphing easy.  It’s $2.50 in my Teachers pay Teachers store.

Thanks for reading,

Christina