Lesson 6
Graphs of Situations that Change
These materials, when encountered before Algebra 1, Unit 6, Lesson 6 support success in that lesson.
Lesson Narrative
In the associated Algebra 1 lesson, students make sense of the vertex of a graph and zeros of a quadratic function that represents a context. This supporting lesson gives students a chance to practice identifying intercepts of graphs representing linear and exponential functions. This lesson is a good opportunity to help students become more comfortable extracting the coordinates of important points on graphs using the graphing technology that is available to them. The first activity explicitly asks students to use graphing technology to determine the coordinates of some points on a graph, and draw connections between the various representations and the context they represent. The practice activity offers several opportunities to practice these skills. In the warm-up, students have an opportunity to start to make sense of a situation, so that in the next activity they are in a better position to make sense of what is being asked (MP1) and make sense of the quantities in the situation (MP2).
Learning Goals
Teacher Facing
- Create functions that model a situation with a constant rate of change or constant growth factor.
- Identify the coordinates of intercepts of a graph using technology or other methods.
Student Facing
- Let’s identify intercepts on a graph.