Slope Dude followed Pedro the Penguin in our journal. Pedro the Penguin was a great story that gave the students a visual to relate the idea of slope to. I also use the fact that we read a book from left to right means we also read a graph from left to right.
After building an internal understanding of slope, I wanted to provide the students with a memorable visual that my students could easily draw to reference. They love slope dude. I made sure to explain each component of his face as the students named each type of slope. It made slope dude all the more important.
Then I decided to take it one step further and go over what these slopes look like on a grid. I noticed that even though they knew the types, some of my students had trouble transferring the concept to a grid.
They were retested with a test previously given in the first semester and I had a significant increase in recognition and understanding on the concept of slope thanks to slope dude and the next few journal pages...
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