standard_description: Interpret the equation y = mx + b as defining a linear function, whose graph is a straight line; give examples of functions that are not linear. For example, the function A = s2 giving the area of a square as a function of its side length is not linear because its graph contains the points (1,1), (2,4) and (3,9), which are not on a straight line.
problem_activity: Task
Materials
Completed monthly weather recording sheet
[IMG]
Crayons
Sentence strips with frames (see below)
Student worksheet
Actions
Every day for a month the students record the weather by shading in an appropriate box on the recording sheet (attached).
At the completion of a month of school, the teacher projects the completed recording sheet using a document projector (if working with the whole class) or shows it to the students (if working in a small group setting).
The teacher asks the students to count how many days in the month each type of weather occurred, writing the number by the type of weather.
The teacher or another student asks questions like these:
How many rainy days did we have this month?
How many more rainy days did we have than sunny days?
How many days did we record the weather?
Students compose answers to the questions using sentence frames like these:
In September there were ___  ______ days
There were ___ more ________ days than ________ days
There were ___ fewer _________ days than _______ days
We recorded ____ days of weather altogether.
Both numbers and types of weather are used to fill in the blanks.  Students pair up and share an idea for each sentence frame; then the teacher chooses a student to fill in one of the frames orally, while it is recorded onto the sentence frame.
The students copy the data from the recording sheet onto their worksheet to create their own graph. The teacher may need to model this for the students the first time they do it.
The students choose a sentence based on the completed frames to match each of the weather pictures given.  So, for the sunny picture a student could write, "There were 5 more sunny days than rainy days," or "There were 12 sunny days in September."  The frame of "We recorded ___ days of weather altogether" could be stated orally, or added at the bottom of the recording sheet to be filled in. The teacher may need to model this for the students the first time they do it.


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