How Can You Incorporate Literacy with Coordinate Grids?

I was ecstatic when my new books arrived!  I had been wanting to order these books for a while, and finally discovered that I had some money in the budget!  What is so great about these books is that they tell the story of how Rene’ Descartes invented the coordinate plane.  The general story tells of how he was sick in bed staring at a fly on the ceiling and wanted to map its location.  As the old adage goes, “necessity is the mother of invention”,  so  Descartes visualized the coordinate grid system on his ceiling to locate the fly.  This is such a great story to help  students conceptualize coordinate grids while tying  social studies (maps), literacy, and math together in one lesson!