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!
Digital Version of Function vs Not a Function Card Sort
I created a Desmos version of this card sort to make things easier for those of us doing distance learning/hybrid learning.

Free Download of Function or Not a Function Card Sort Activity
Function vs Not a Function Card Sort (PDF) (5483 downloads)
Function vs Not a Function Card Sort (Editable Publisher File ZIP) (1620 downloads)
Anonymous
Monday 6th of January 2020
This was so helpful for my small group math lessons. Thank you so much!!
Unknown
Friday 6th of December 2019
Thank you so much for all of your amazing resources. Id be lost without you!
Unknown
Wednesday 12th of December 2018
Thanks for this. Looks great!
Sophia SMith
Saturday 17th of March 2018
This is awesome idea, will try with my kids too. Thanks.
Mrs. Stichter
Thursday 1st of February 2018
Thank you so much for all of your resources. Here is the card sort broken into sections on Desmos (my kids need to take it slow...) https://teacher.desmos.com/activitybuilder/custom/5a728cf7ac00fb3c93b23a4a