IMP Day 36 - Following Families on the Trail

With today's activity we venture from using discrete (nonlinear) data and finding the line of best fit to being given a starting point and a constant rate (average miles traveled per day or amount of coffee drank per day). The students were asked to graph the information and then answer some questions about the graphs. Lastly they were asked to write the rule for the graph.

These pictures are in reverse order to what they needed to be. We started the activity with "noticing and wondering" about the problem. I am trying to teach the students to "notice and wonder" about the parts of the problem that help them perform the mathematical task...we sometimes get sidetracked!

I was so excited to hear one of my students say, "I'm going to make me an In-Out table!" so I had to take a picture of her paper! The teaching guide for this lesson tells you to go ahead and tell the students to let July 12th as Day 0. I still have students that use the x-axis as a "data point" instead of letting it be zero. Many of them counted by 25s or 50s today and wrote 25 or 50 at the origin. Also I still had some students that didn't use consistent spacing. I sometimes wonder how many times we have to practice something for it to sink in! I am giving a quiz on Friday so I hope my students remember by then!

My 5th period students finished Ox Expressions and started Ox Expressions at Home. All of my classes were given an assignment to complete for homework and I am assigning a grade for it tomorrow. Lately I have only had 1 or 2 per class (of 20-28) attempt to complete any homework tasks. And I am not asking for them to do something that should take more than 15-20 minutes! I hope the grade motivates them to actually attempt the work. We shall see.