Are You Teaching Coordinate Grids? Try This

Marilyn Burns’ lesson book Algebraic Thinking (3-5) offers a great deeper level thinking lesson with points on a coordinate grid. The lesson is titled “Four Points” and has students plot four horizontal, diagonal, and vertical points on a grid.  This is a teacher guided discussion lesson.  After the students plot each set of four points the teacher charts the points and leads a class discussion in the patterns students notice in the ordered pairs charted.  For example, the x coordinate in the ordered pair repeats on a vertical line, the y coordinate repeats on a horizontal line, and the coordinates each change by one on a diagonal line.  This lesson is a good choice to expose students to coordinate grid vocabulary, however if you are looking for a student centered lesson to use with cooperative groups, this is not it.