Four Cars Task for Introducing Rate of Change

I really like this four cars task from The Dana Center for introducing rate of change. This was one of the activities featured in the 2013 Common Core Workshop I attended (OGAP). I am blogging about the activities we did last summer so that they are easier for me to find when I go to plan lessons. I hope these ideas will inspire you as well.

four cars rate of change task

This task is from the UT Dana Center’s collection of Algebra I assessments.

four cars task for introducing rate of change
Source: Four Cars Task from UT Dana Center

You can find this four cars task on page 235 of this PDF.

They told us in the common core workshop I attended that we should really emphasize the use of “rate of change” in class instead of the more traditionally used term of “slope.”

As an extension task, we were told we should ask students to create graphs of each person’s car.

More Activities for Teaching Slope

Sarah Carter teaches high school math in her hometown of Coweta, Oklahoma. She currently teaches AP Precalculus, AP Calculus AB, and Statistics. She is passionate about sharing creative and hands-on teaching ideas with math teachers around the world through her blog, Math = Love.

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