Every Graph Tells a Story

It's one thing to be able to plot points on a graph, but its a very different skill to be able to understand what it all means and communicate it in words.

Distance-Time Graphs (Plotting the distance moved over an interval of time, be it seconds, minutes or hours) are a lot of fun to teach for this story-telling reason! Since there are so many ways and reasons why things move over a period of time, students can work together to produce some concrete evidence of understanding in an interactive and creative way. Here's how I have done it in a classroom once before:

*Students will work in pairs. They will create a narrative that involves something/someone moving at different speeds and different distances, with reasoning as to why. It needs to be a minimum of half a page. They also need to make an answer key (on a separate page) that is the graphed version of their story. You can incorporate technology by having students make animated videos or actually record their movie.

*Students will then swap their stories with their partner, and try to graph it.

*After this is done, they 2 students will work together to compare the partner's graph with each answer key. They will discuss any indescrepancies, and ask the teacher if unsure who is right.

This activity involves not just consolidating their understanding of the topic, but problem solving and practice of effective and clear written communication.

Here is one of many examples found on google.

http://www.amara.org/en/videos/8CoC4tjQrgLX/info/graphs-tell-stories/

http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=213