Home Chat  Blogs   Archive Directory
    My ScrapBook My Collections
  

Archive : 2002 : September : 15

An idea...
By LindaR

Clip to ScrapBook   
I hope I'm understanding the need here! First of all, ask your student what might help him/her to remember the X axis. This will get him/her to think about what it means. Of course, build on his/her idea if needed...

My fourth grade students came up with a variety of ways to remember, so I didn't want to confuse them with MY way of remembering (or someone else's!). I still had some who got confused, so I showed them this trick:

Think of X as a person walking. I made an X on the overhead, put shoes on it, and a head. We had a lot of fun with that (which made them even more involved). I showed

them that we always need to walk to the ladder before we start climbing it (show with fingers, X sticks, etc).

I didn't want to emphasize much with the Y except that it's what comes next. Some of the kids liked to think of the Y as holding its arms up to show upward movement, but then I'd have those kids that'd say, "HUH??? I'm confused!"

I wanted to make sure they got the X since it's the first one to get going in the right direction

Also, whenever they wrote the coordinates, I had them label X and Y under the lines where they placed the actual coordinate number.

Be sure to give your student plenty of fun coordinate activities to reinforce the concept. There's no better way of "learning" than by doing.



 


BACK



Visit our ProTeacher Community

For individual use only. Do not copy, reproduce or transmit.
Copyright © 1998-2007 ProTeacher
ProTeacher Archive Project - All rights reserved




What people are currently discussing in the ProTeacher Community:
46 states to go
Readers/Writers Workshops
Inferencing/Inferring Implicit Facts
Behavior Plan
Incentives
First Year Teacher!
a mini lesson or guided writing
Spaces & Places-Diller (update)
Punch card management
Literacy Centers
Classroom Music
Foam Letters
Finding National Standards online
Target Bins - Composition Notebooks
classroom economy ideas?