In this lesson, students make use of structure when they extend the vertical and horizontal axes to include positive and negative numbers and create the coordinate plane (MP7). The horizontal and vertical axes cross at the origin to create quadrants, the four regions of the coordinate plane. The origin is the point in the coordinate plane.

Students begin the lesson by revisiting ordered pairs in order to describe the location of three points in the coordinate plane. They continue to practice identifying the coordinates of points as well as which quadrant a point is located in. 

Then students explore the idea of scaling axes appropriately to accommodate data where coordinates are rational numbers. Students attend to precision as they plan where to place axes on a grid and how to scale them to represent data clearly (MP6). In an optional activity, students practice working with coordinates in all four quadrants as they navigate a maze on a coordinate grid. This lesson gives students the opportunity to develop fluency with plotting coordinates in all four quadrants and scaling axes to fit data that is essential for the context-driven work over the next few lessons.