Four Types of Slope Pictures

My Algebra 1 students recently completed a four types of slope pictures project. I’m excited to share the resulting slope artwork with you!

This weekend and today were spent attending my first ever student council state convention.  It was full of fun and games and amazing speakers, but I have to admit that I am exhausted.  I’m so thankful to be sleeping in my own bed tonight.

On Friday, I started our next chapter in Algebra 1 over graphing linear equations.  I went over the four types of slope.  I had heard amazing things about the Slope Dude video on twitter.  At first, my students didn’t know what to think.  Then, like magic, the students started repeating whatever Slope Dude had said without my prompting.  This didn’t just happen once.  It happened every time I showed it.  They were laughing and having a good time watching the video.  Even more importantly, those phrases stuck with them.  The students were easily able to classify the type of slope of any graph I could throw at them.  They begged and begged to watch the video again.

I also showed them how to draw Mr. Slope Guy.  I thought they would really enjoy him, but they had already almost mastered the types of slope from Slope Dude.  So, they weren’t as impressed as I had expected them to be. 

Then, we used our new knowledge of the types of slope to classify the slope of each letter of the alphabet.  This activity sparked some great conversations.

Since I wasn’t there today, I needed to leave an assignment that my students could complete without my assistance.  I left them with instructions to draw a picture that included at least 5 lines with positive slope 5 lines with negative slope, 5 lines with undefined slope, and 5 lines with zero slope.   Then, they had to label the slope of each line and color their picture.

These are just some of the creations I came back to today.  Please note: some of the slopes are labeled incorrectly in these pictures.  I have a couple of students who are switching positive and negative in some cases.  This is good for me to know so I can try to work on clearing up some misconceptions tomorrow during our bellwork time.          

Four Types of Slope Pictures

Houses

Christmas Tree

Robot

Houston Skyline

Hipster Narwhal

Frankenstein

IRobot

House

Fishing Trip

“Strange Tree”

Flower

House and Dog House

Volcano, Robot, Train, House, and Mailbox. 

I can’t tell you how proud I am of this student.  He put more effort into this assignment than I have ever seen him put into anything this year.