Function vs Not a Function Card Sort Activity

This function vs not a function card sort activity is the perfect way to assess whether or not students can apply the definition of a function to determine whether a relation is or is not a function.

This card sort activity provides students practice classifying graphs, tables (both horizontal and vertical tables), ordered pairs, and mapping diagrams as either a function or not a function.

My old card sort for this was stolen from Kim Hughey and resized on the copy machine, so I didn’t have a digital copy. Last week, I decided to create a new one instead of trying to track down my paper copy of the old one I had been using.

Some years, I had students do the card sort over two separate pages so they could write a justification sentence next to each card.

Here’s what I came up with for my new function vs not a function card sort:

I tried to include as many different relations as possible in as organized a way as possible to reduce cutting time. Students don’t have to think about how to cut around each relation. They just have to cut on the dotted lines.

And, as a bonus, you only need to print one sheet per three students!

I decided to print them on blue paper.

Some of my students did their sorting in their notebooks. 

Others did their sorting on their desk then glued the results in their notebooks afterwards. 

Either way, I did enforce that my students get their sorting checked BEFORE gluing them in their notebooks!