I feel like my students are once again struggling to understand slope. I know that they struggled with this last year, so I presented it in different ways this year:
- in the context of a real-problem, as rate of change (how fast my hair grows)
- through an online reading with lots of illustrations, along with questions to guide their reading
- an in-class discussion of what they had learned and multiple examples
The good news is, some of them get it. They can identify positive and negative slopes with ease. But give them two points and ask for the slope.... and most will get it wrong. I've got to move on soon (like, Monday) to equations of lines, but if they can't get the slope right their whole equation will end up wrong. Any ideas? How do others present slope?
Posts
Rise over Run
ReplyDeleteChange in y over change in x
Or my favorite example...
You need to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. Before you can run to the bathroom, you need to rise out of bed.