Today I did a lesson with 6th grade called Linear Graphs: Life-Sized Coordinate Pairs that I found on the Teaching Channel. Definitely go there and watch the video. It explains it in great detail!
To do Life Sized Human Graphing put a giant coordinate graph on the floor and then give the kids a rule. They must come up with an ordered pair that fits the rule and then go and stand on their ordered pair.
I taped a coordinate plane on the floor with painters tape. I also had each student wear a dry-erase necklace to write the ordered pair on so everyone could see their ordered pair. They kept saying, “Does my ordered pair work?” I kept saying, “Go graph yourself and see!”. The class stayed engaged the entire time, and were even “overly engaged” arguing about the math at points. I love that. After the first few examples I let them ALL come up and get in line instead of just four or five. I did this mostly because they begged me. They couldn’t wait to get up and see if their point fell on the line!
I used Max’s “noticings” in this as well. They first noticed that they were all in a line. Then they noticed that the line was steeper when it was 2x or 3x. They noticed that 2x made the y-value go up by 2, 3x by 3, and so on. The connections that were made today were amazing and I hope that they carry over tomorrow when I introduce slope (aka rate of change)!
I also made a powerpoint so that the game would be easy to manage. Just click to follow the link and download the file from the Math Wiki. After we start graphing linear equations I want to try Graphing Full Body Style!