"Connecting the Dots" between the Coordinate Plane and the Real World

Although we have been a bit MIA from the blog the last few months, we have been fully present in our classrooms.  Both of us have been working tirelessly to keep our middle school students engaged despite the numerous days of testing that come along with the spring season.

Sometimes, some of my (Meg's) favorite and most successful classroom activities are those that require no technology at all...a good, old fashioned, back-to-basics type of activity...and then we will follow up with a little blogging, of course.  ;)

The coordinate plane
on our classroom floor

As my sixth graders and I began our exploration of the coordinate plane, our classroom floor was just begging to get involved.  Our classroom floor is comprised of square foot tiles which create the perfect grid.  All I had to do was lay down an x and y axis with my trusty red duct tape, and we were ready to go!  With the tables moved off to the side of the room, the students of course were immediately intrigued as they walked into class.


"Where do we sit?"
"Why is that stuff on the floor?"
"Wait, is this like Battleship?"

Using the coordinate plane
to create polygons

The kids then became a part of a kinesthetic lesson, moving around the coordinate plane from quadrant to quadrant, and then taking on the role of specific ordered pairs based on their exact location on the floor.  Conversations were had about reflecting points about the x and y axis and why (0,0) is called the origin (gotta get that academic vocabulary in there, too!).  Our favorite part of the activity was when a few student volunteers stood at various points about the coordinate plane and held the same piece of yarn to form a polygon.  Simultaneously, the remaining students were plotting the same ordered pairs on their own coordinate planes.  The students were able to "connect the dots" to identify the polygon, which ultimately led to conversations about classifying polygons, perimeter and area.  (Don't you just love when you can connect multiple math topics into one conversation?!)  To end this class, we sent out a class Tweet to share with the world what we learned.

The next few days, we did some more kinesthetic coordinate plane activities to start each class, but we spent the majority of our time working with the pictorial representation of the coordinate plane.  The students also did some research on how coordinate planes can be useful in real life and blogged about their findings.  Many students made connections in their blog posts between the coordinate plane and the game Battleship and using maps.  However there were other interesting real-world connections I would not have thought of myself, like this student who discovered how artists can use coordinate planes and this student who remembered a video game designer who had spoken to her elementary school and explained how coordinate planes were used in his job.

Not only did this lesson allow the students to get up and move, but the blogging was a great way to integrate literacy into our math classroom.  The students could "connect the dots" between the coordinate plane in math class and how it is used in real life.

What are some of your most successful kinesthetic lessons?  How have you recently used blogging with your students?  We always love to hear from you!