Fun with Coordinate Graphing

My notes from teaching a block with my older group on Linear Measurement in April to follow up on our Farming & Gardening block in February:

• Linear Measurement & Coordinate Graphing - Intro
• Linear Measurement Week Two
• Linear Measurement Week Three
• Linear Measurement Week Four

Cheese Puffs (age 9-10)

Day Fourteen

• do Area Exploration Inquiry Lesson: Parallelogram, Triangle, Circle; discuss the term "congruent"
• look at Area Model Multiplication: one digit by two digit problems; discuss the term "distributive property"
• preview tomorrow's test

Day Fifteen

• have students take Area & Perimeter Test in our Zoom session without help as a formal assessment

Day Sixteen

• discuss the Rene Descartes "Stay in Bed Scholar" story from the wonderful Mathematicians Are People, Too: Stories from the Lives of Great Mathematicians, Vol. 2 by Luetta and Wilbert Reimer

  

• do Coordinate Grid - Practice with Ordered Pairs
  (this is a nice introduction... shows an icon and asks "state the coordinates of"... leveled by difficulty... introduces four quadrants)
• reinforce the "always run before you jump"; solve mystery pictures from Graphing in Quadrant 1 of the Cartesian Coordinate Plane, with each child tackling a different picture:
  1) tree
  2) flowers
  3) lightning storm
  4) spider web
  5) optical illusion

It was a fun way to wrap up this busy & productive Math block!

Baby Wolves (age 7-8)

Today was the last day of the Math block in both classes. Knowing that, in the classroom, the younger group would have listened in on the above lesson and wanted to try it too, I went ahead and did the introduction and Coordinate Grid - Practice with Ordered Pairs (only first quadrant examples) with them as well. Coordinate graphing is just like Battleship, and it's fun! I'll give this group a bit of extra practice in their independent work packets next week as well, focusing on examples with alphanumeric grids. Much easier than the ordered pairs. You don't have to remember which number is which!

Resources for Mystery Pictures

I'll give every child in my classroom some of these follow-up activities next week in their independent work practice, but if you want more for May or for the summer, here are all of the "mystery picture" resources I have found on TpT that I like so far. They are all free, but you do need an account to download them. You can also ask me and I can get them using my account.

Alphanumeric Grid

Math Winter Activity Coordinate Grid - Penguin
she has this leveled by difficulty so there's a blank grid and there's also a grid with the coordinates for each box lightly written in it (A1, A2, A3, etc.)

Coordinate Graphing - Tangram Pieces
this is such a cool idea!
make the tangram pieces and then cut them out and solve tangram puzzles with them; available as alphanumeric grid or ordered pairs (first quadrant)

Ordered Pairs - First Quadrant

Graphing Mystery Picture - Alien

Coordinate Plane Graphing Picture - The Impossible Triangle

Coordinate Graphing Picture - United States
available as first quadrant or all four quadrants

Ordered Pairs - All Four Quadrants

Back to School Coordinate Plane Graphing Activity - Apple

Coordinate Grid Riddle - draw the solution to the riddle
"Why was it too hot in the stadium after the game?"

Graphing Mystery Picture - Bicycle

Other Coordinate Graphing Activities

First Quadrant

Coordinate Graphing Game for Holes by Louis Sachar game

Coordinate Grid Battleship game

Instructions: "Copy this gameboard, fold in half, and place in a file folder for an instant game of Coordinate Battleship. Students love to practice their coordinate graphing via this simple game. Students place their 5 ships (5,4,3,3,2) on their ocean grid. They alternating naming coordinate points and marking misses and hits on their target grid using two different colors. First one to sink 5 ships wins."

All Four Quadrants

Quadrant Match-Up! activity
(helpful teacher review notes at Four Quadrants)

Your Name in Coordinates activity

General

Five Cartesian Coordinate Plane Graph Paper templates
-1st Quadrant to 20
-1st Quadrant to 20 with Fractional Gridlines
-1st Quadrant to 20 No labels
-All 4 Quadrants to 20
-All 4 Quadrants to 20 No Labels

Counted Cross-Stitch

Counted cross-stitch, usually introduced in grade 4 in Waldorf schools to follow up on Fractions, is also the perfect follow up to coordinate graphing! Yes, you have tiny bits which create a whole, but you also have to be able to read the pattern to see where to put the next stitch on the grid. I highly recommend finding a kit or two for your child to do in May and over the summertime. If we were together in the classroom, I would have provided embroidery hoops and Aida cloth and floss and embroidery needles; luckily, this kind of thing is easy to find. You may even have some kits at home that you always meant to get to and never did... but make sure they are simple.

In grade 4 Norse Mythology (and the corresponding Form Drawing), we look at the beautiful art of Celtic knots. It would be lovely to find a counted cross-stitch kit with a Celtic knot motif. If you find (or create) one, let me know!!!

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