Introduction

In this lesson, you will learn how coordinate planes help to organize information.

So far in this unit, we have learned all of the important components of the coordinate system. In addition, you have learned how to locate objects and plot points in Quadrant I of the coordinate system. Today, we are going to extend our knowledge by representing a real-world mathematical problem by graphing points in the first quadrant, interpreting the values, and creating a graph based on the information provided.

Before we begin, you must do the following:

1. Get a highlighter - any color.
2. Print out “My Dog Rough’s” story and glue it into your math journal.
3. Print out the coordinate plane template and glue it into your journal.

My Dog Rough's Story

Coordinate Plane Template

Read the story “My Dog Rough”. While reading, think about what the story is specifically talking about in regard to math.

In Your Journal: Jot down your ideas in your math journal.

My Dog Rough

We are going to read the story again and create a graph of Rough’s life using the information from the story. While we read the story again, I want you to highlight, along with the video, important information related to Rough’s age and growth throughout his life.

Interactive

Now that we have highlighted all of the important information related to Rough’s age and growth throughout his life, we must organize this information in a manner that will help us create a graph on our coordinate plane. When working with a coordinate system, we know that we need the following: origin, x-axis, y-axis, and ordered pairs (coordinates). If we think back to the beginning of our unit, we should remember that in order to graph points on a coordinate plane, we must have ordered pairs also known as coordinates (x and y).

Let’s take the information that we gathered from our story, create a t-chart and organize it. Copy the graphic that you see below in your journal on your handout and let’s fill in the missing pieces. Follow the guide in the presentation below to complete your t-chart.

We will use the age for our x coordinate and the weight for our y coordinate to fill in the t-chart.

Phew, we have all of our information organized! Now, we must create our graph on the coordinate plane. The story of Rough shows a change in growth over the period of his life. We need to use a line graph to accurately represent the information because line graphs show a change over a period of time.

Let’s create our graph! Watch the guiding video below - follow along and create your graph with me!

Bar Graph of Rough's Life

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