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.

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

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.