Linear Functions Foldable

On Monday, another Algebra 2 teacher and I were discussing the sad state of affairs of our students retention on how to graph and write equations of linear functions.  I mentioned I would like to do a foldable on it and began the search through Dinah Zike's Foldable book I picked up in 2010 at the NCTM in San Diego.  I really needed something with 5 things.  Nothing was looking right and I didn't want to settle for something less than what I visioned in my mind.  Then, with 5 minutes left before I had to pick up my amazing kids from daycare today, the idea hit me.  Here it is:

Supplies:  Three pieces of paper.

What to do:
Fold all three using the hamburger fold, one inside the other.  With the crease at the bottom, I cut one inch off the top of the first 1/2 page in order to create a title page and a place to see all the tabs.

Trim the tabs above so you quickly reference the type of linear function.  On the inside I wanted to create a template.  I jotted some scribbles, rewrote the scribbles for this sample, and will type it up officially sometime in the wee hours of "I really need some sleep" and "Why did I have that cup of coffee?".  I will post the electronic copy soon.

Then I filled out a sample page in my son's crayons.  The black pen represents what will be typed.  And the lame hand drawn graph will become a pretty graph, too.  I have filled out what I think I will lead the kids through for slope-intercept form.  Then I just made the template for the other pages.  I really just needed to see how this looked torn apart so I could figure out the copying of it for Friday's lesson.  I will not cover this all in one day.  In fact, it won't be finished until the end of the month due to the special block I have for my A Hour class.  The kids will learn about graphing first, then writing the equations.  I will have them keep this all year long.  BIG IDEA: when I need the kids to graph a line in February and exponential laws and quadratics have filled their brain so they have forgotten how to graph a line, they can whip this sucker out and reteach themselves.  That's the plan anyway.


I was in a hurry to get this on the blog.  I needed something that stated vocab words or what the other variables meant...  m = slope, etc.  I am not liking VARIABLES on the left side of the page, but I don't know what to put there.  Any suggestions would be nice.

I like how you can see the tab on this picture.  The other tabs get increasingly longer, so the vertical lines tab doesn't need any cutting at all.  And of course, it would be stapled in the center.

Well I have an electronic copy of this document.  But I'm not sure how to post it here.