Graphing Linear Functions in 6th Grade Math

Graphing functions hit us in May of this school year. Our state testing had wrapped up and we started working with function tables and graphing function equations, on a pretty basic level.

This post is my summary of how I approached practicing the basic idea of graphing linear functions with my 6th grade math students:-) Included is a description of the task card activity I used, which you can download for free at the end of the post.

I couldn’t find any functions activities to suit my needs “exactly,” so I decided to make a shorter Footloose task card activity to give the students some extra practice (and some movement that Footloose provides…movement helps keep the students engaged…especially in May!).

I created 15 Footloose task cards for graphing functions. The cards all have the same directions (“Choose x-values to complete a function table for:_____” and “Graph the function.”), but they have different functions to graph.

For example, Card 1 says:
1) Choose x-values to complete a function table for: y = x + 5
2)Graph the function.

The answer grid for this graphing functions activity is actually two pages:

• Answer grid 1 is for students to choose x-values and find ordered pairs by completing a table.
• Answer grid 2 has small coordinate planes, for students to graph the functions. *note: The coordinate planes on the graphing page are definitely small, and I was a little worried they might be too small, but overall, the students had no trouble with the tiny grids. I had one student (out of 125 students) who asked if he could use bigger graph paper, which was fine. The rest of the students did well with the grids.

​As the students worked, it was interesting to see which students purposely chose negative x-values, to challenge themselves to work with negative numbers (we hadn’t officially studied operations with negative integers), while others stayed with the comfortable positives.