Graphing Functions on the Coordinate Plane Graphic Organizer

I created this graphing functions on the coordinate plane graphic organizer for my Algebra 1 students to glue in their interactive notebooks. We completed this as part of a much larger activity that involved modeling function machines using flip chutes.

I was a bit frustrated over my students’ struggle with function notation from the previous day when I made this graphic organizer. I thought the way to fix the issues we were having was to do an example problem that forced students to use function notation an obnoxious amount of times.

I gave the class a function to graph in function notation.  And, I also gave them their inputs, the integers from -5 to 5.  Students had to write the output in function notation, the output as a number, the ordered pair in function notation, and the ordered pair using only numbers.  We did the first two lines of the table.  Then, I gave students several minutes to work.  We would check their work, and they would continue on.  It was time-consuming, but I think it was a positive learning experience.

It was awesome to see students start to make connections.  Some realized they could very easily fill in the function notation columns.  Others noticed that the numerical output increased by two every time.  I walked around the room, pointing at student work, congratulating them on finding patterns.  We graphed the ordered pairs, and they formed a line!