Course Guide - USAID Teacher Education Project

3. What is essential to know or do in class?a) Introduce scatter plots and line graphs by relating them to students’ prior workplotting points on a coordinate plane in the Algebra unit.b) Have students read, analyse, and interpret line graphs and scatter plotsc) Introduce the idea of a trend line and the concept of correlation.d) Help students distinguish between graphs that are developed to show algebraicfunctions and from those that are designed to communicate information to generalaudiences.4. Class Activitiesa) This session begins by having students work in pairs to read and interpret the linegraph and scatter plot on the handout entitled Graph Analysis 2. Because these areboth coordinate graphs, students should be familiar with how to plot points on acoordinate grid and to read a coordinate graph, even when the grid is not visible.After students have worked in pairs to discuss the line graph and scatter plot, have awhole class discussion of what they discovered, both their questions and the questionsat the end of the handout. In particular, note new questions that prior students had notsuggested before.b) Take the opportunity, if no one has raised it, to point out that although the weathergraph is called a "line graph" it is not a graph of a single linear function. This is agraph displaying observational data from real world sources in a user-friendly mannerfor a general audience.Note, too, that line graphs suggest predictions. This predictive quality allows forextrapolation (what might happen next?) and interpolation (what may have happenedbetween data points?).Emphasize that line graphs designed for a general audience usually connect data