The purpose of this activity is for students to describe coordinates for points. After playing a round of What’s the Point?, students have an opportunity to write a description of the location of a point in the coordinate grid. The structure of this part of the activity mirrors what students did in the previous lesson when they were describing a rectangle. Some students may use the coordinates on the grid while others may use words to describe the location of the point.

Students make choices about how to revise their thinking based on what makes the description stronger and clearer to them. This activity not only supports students developing language to describe the location of a point but also develops a deeper understanding of the coordinate grid (MP6). Invite students to use language from the display from an earlier lesson if they find it helpful.

This activity uses MLR1 Stronger and Clearer Each Time. Advances: Reading, Writing.

• Select previously identified students to share how they revised their explanation for the location of the point in the last problem.
• Display the image of the coordinate grid with a point from the student book.
• “The point can be described using the coordinates . Where do you think these coordinates come from?” (They describe the location of the point. The point is on grid line 3 and grid line 4. The point is where these grid lines intersect.)

The purpose of this activity is for students to write ordered pairs of numbers to represent points in the coordinate grid and to plot points with given coordinates. Students may interpret the horizontal and vertical coordinates backward. With time and practice they will learn the convention that the first coordinate represents the horizontal location of the point and the second coordinate represents its vertical location.

• “What do you know about this point?”
• Plot the points on the grid. “What is the same and different about these points and the points that you plotted?”

• “What is challenging about naming the coordinates for a point?” (I need to remember which coordinate goes first and which one goes second. I have to be careful to make sure I get the right horizontal and vertical location of the point.)
• “What is challenging about plotting points on the coordinate grid?” (I have to remember which coordinate goes with which axis. It is hard to remember the coordinates while you are also trying to find them on the grid. I could find each coordinate but finding the point with both of those coordinates is hard.)