Lesson plan for balancing equations

Lesson plans > Graphing points

Lesson plan for graphing points on the coordinate plane by Sulan Dun

Graphing points on the coordinate plane can seem rather dry and academic. This lesson plan makes use of a fun interactive tutorial and game that shows why coordinates are useful, shows how they work, and provides a fun game to practice picking the correct coordinates.

Directions:

1. Have students go to http://funbasedlearning.com/algebra/graphing/points/default.htm and click the Introduction button. There, they learn why coordinates are useful and how they work in a fun interactive story and tutorial.

2. Upon completion of the tutorial, students play the Easy Version of Graph mole to identify which coordinate the mole is at before he can eat all the vegetables.

3. When students have mastered the easy version of Graph Mole, they progress to the medium and hard versions of Graph Mole for additional practice and fluency in graphing points.

Assessment:
The easiest way to assess this is to just ask them to show you the final screen for each version. Here is a scoring/assessment guide:

Easy version - A score of 4000 or more means they have mastered this non-timed version. Maximum score is 5000 points.

Medium version - students should be able to complete the game and get to the “You have defeated the mole” screen. Any score here is fine as long as they can get to the final screen - they have a satisfactory mastery of the material. Maximum score is 6000 points.

Hard version - if a student can get to “You have defeated the mole” screen in the hard version, that's quite an achievement, it shows excellent mastery of the material. Maximum score is 10000 points.

Conclusion(s):

This is a fun way to teach coordinate point graphing and it's very motivating for students to learn. They really enjoy the funny story and tutorial and have lots of fun competing with each other as they strive to perfect their ability to quickly identify coordinates so they can get a higher score.