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.
Just to let you know how the slope dude video got started, many years ago, I was speaking at our state's math conference and I told the audience how I would dress up in ski chlothes and tell this story of a really dumb guy named slope dude. I went through the whole story and drew the picture and everyone gotta kick out of it. A couple of months later, after school started, I got an email from someone who had attended that session. He teaches in an inner city school in Dallas, Texas and thought Slope Dude could get through to his students so he made a video and posted it on you tube. He goes by the name of GDawg and he's got tons of teaching videos on his channel. Anway, I think students all over the country watch the slope dude video now just because I told a sily story at that conference!! So crazy.
Awesome!
Totally awesome pictures. I love student work pictures, don't you?
I totally love this idea! Will be using in the future 😀
Its called Mr.Slope Guy too. Also Slope Tree, Slope Cat, and Slope Man
Good drawing
I am using this for my classes today. I needed an assignment because I am out today and this will be something the kids will love doing. Thanks Sarah for all of your wonderful ideas and how you share everything.
Hope this assignment goes well with your students! I loved coming back from having a sub and seeing a completed pile of creative, colorful pictures. Usually, it's a struggle to get my students to do work with a sub, but they actually did this without much complaint.
Thanks for reading my blog! It means a lot to me!
Thanks for this super idea! I used it for extra credit on a test on slope, and my students loved it! It was so cute. Some of them came up to me to ask if it was good before handing in their tests because they were self-conscious about their drawing skills! Lol!
Glad you could use the idea!
i'm really in trouble right now and i'll look at this later in life and probably be mad at my self but at lest i'm getting my work done but i'm falling my classes and could you help me please
Thanks. This is great!
This is great. Love the link to alphabet soup. Although my G8s do a really good job of identifying the value of slope for most lines, they still get mixed up with positive and negative! I'll be showing Slope Dude when we get back after our 3-week winter break to review. The pics you show are cute. Have you used Desmos for drawing pictures? We just did snowmen before winter break. Reviews SO much about slope intercept form and they just thought they were having fun!
Kristin