7th grade boys honors math class explores the coordinate plane

Last week, in Mrs. Sheinfeld's 7th grade boys honors math class, students spent the morning working on effective communication, understanding the value of precise description, and the importance of dimension, size, and scale. Students paired up in groups where one student was the "communicator", and the other was the "artist". The communicator held a card with a geometric rendering that they had to describe through verbal instruction only so that the artist could recreate it without having seen it. When the roles were reversed, each pair was given a card with an "x" and "y" axis imposed on it. The communicator's card held a new geometric image that he in turn described to the artist to recreate. Students began using phrases such as "then continue down into the 3rd quadrant", and to the "left of the origin". It the final round of the activity, with the roles reversed again, the pair was given a set of cards with a full coordinate plane imposed on them. The communicators INSTANTLY noticed how effectively they were able to communicate the renderings when they were able to give precise distances and landmarks for the artist to draw with. When all of the renderings were assembled, the students marveled at how much more precise and accurate their drawings became with the addition of a horizontal and a vertical axis, and subsequently through the use of the grid on the coordinate plane.