Using the coordinate plane

Last summer, I made this coordinate plane bulletin board for my classroom, with great intentions for its use....but...I didn't use it as much as I thought I would.  This year, however, it is definitely something my students will need to use, to find area, perimeter, distance between points, meaning of absolute value, etc.

So, I decided to start using it for a problem of the week type of bulletin board. The first question I put on the board is an area question. I put five points on the board with thumbtacks and labeled the points (though it's hard to see the labels in the picture).

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Then I tied together a couple of pieces of lanyard that I had in my room (I need to take some yarn to school) and placed it around the tacks to form the figure.

I'll have the students work on this throughout the week as they finish classwork, and then on Friday we'll discuss the problem as a group.

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