The Adventures of Slope Dude Posters

Today I want to share my Adventures of Slope Dude Posters that I created for my high school math classroom.

It’s no secret around here that I love Slope Dude.  Haven’t seen the video?  You HAVE to click on the link.  Trust me.  

I know different people have different opinions of Slope Dude. When I tweeted a picture of these posters yesterday, one person replied that they showed their kids the video last year and they would NEVER do that again.  

Is Slope Dude a silly video? Definitely.

But it’s the best way I’ve come up with to get my students to remember the four different types of slope.  

For my students, the sheer silliness makes it pretty much unforgettable.  And, it becomes an ongoing joke for the rest of the year.  

They especially like it when we play Slope Dude Says.  It’s like Simon Says but with arm movements to represent the different types of slope.  It’s a definite favorite!  

For the last couple of years, I’ve had a set of WWSDS? posters hanging in my classroom.  This stands for “What Would Slope Dude Say?”  

When my students are graphing linear equations, I tell them that the last thing they should always do after graphing is ask “What Would Slope Dude Say?”  

If they do this, they will catch so many of their mistakes!

This year, I decided to take my decorating a step farther and actually map out Slope Dude’s journey on the wall.  This will stay up all year as a visual.  

I think my students will mainly use it as a quick reference for zero slope vs undefined slope.

This set of adventures of slope dude posters is made out of four sheets of letter sized paper.  I laminated the sheets for durability.  

This, of course, made it very hard to photograph.  I managed to get Slope Dude to be glare-free in this photo, but the number line posters weren’t so lucky.
 

After hanging it up, I decided I should title my posters, too.  Someone on twitter suggested I should print off a Slope Dude to place on my posters.  Such a cute idea!

See that bit between “Niiiiiice Negative” and “This is zero fun”?  There was a bit of the wall showing between those, so I took a bit of the green that I trimmed off “This is” and “zero fun”  and stuck it behind to make it look more complete.

My favorite part, of course, is the vertical “UNDEFINED!” section.  I hope this reinforces that a vertical line has an undefined slope.