Middle Grades Math: Verbal to Visual: Sketching Graphs

Objectives

• Students will sketch a graph that exhibits the qualitative features of a function that has been described verbally.
• Students will describe qualitatively the functional relationship between two quantities by analyzing a graph (e.g., where the function is increasing or decreasing, linear or nonlinear).
• Students will model mathematics.
• Students will attend to precision.

Vocabulary

• function
• increasing/decreasing function
• constant rate of change
• quadrants

About the Lesson

This lesson involves sketching graphs based upon important features described verbally in a situation.
As a result, students will:

• Focus on identifying important features that aid in drawing sketches of functions, such as:
  • where the function is increasing, decreasing, or remaining constant;
  • the slope of the function or parts of the function, and;
  • the quadrants the function lies in.
• Use these same ideas to describe the functional relationship between two variables as they write their own situation for a partner student to analyze.