Linear Relations
Strand: Patterns and Relations (Patterns)
Outcomes: 1, 2
Step 3: Plan for Instruction
Guiding Questions
- What learning opportunities and experiences should I provide to promote learning of the outcomes and permit students to demonstrate their learning?
- What teaching strategies and resources should I use?
- How will I meet the diverse learning needs of my students?
A. Assessing Prior Knowledge and Skills
Before introducing new material, consider ways to assess and build on students' knowledge and skills related to patterns.
Ways to Assess and Build on Prior Knowledge 
B. Choosing Instructional Strategies
Consider the following strategies when planning lessons.
- Build on understanding of patterns from Grade 6—connecting the concrete, pictorial and symbolic representations of patterns and developing rules for patterns.
- Provide experiences with various models for patterns and the translations among the models; i.e., various diagrams for the same pattern, tables of values, graphs.
- Encourage students to describe patterns and rules orally and in writing before using algebraic symbols.
- Provide opportunity to connect the concrete and pictorial representations to symbolic representations as well as connecting the symbolic representations to pictorial and concrete representations.
- Provide examples of growth patterns that are arithmetic (the same number is added or subtracted each time) and geometric (the same number is multiplied or divided each time).
- In creating tables of values and graphs for linear relations, use real-world contexts.
- In creating a table of values for a given linear relation by substituting values for the variable, encourage students to draw diagrams to illustrate the linear relation in which the step number replaces the variable to obtain the number of elements in each step.
- In formulating linear relations representing oral or written patterns, encourage students to draw diagrams and create tables of values to assist them in visualizing the relationship.
- Provide examples in which students formulate linear relations that are recursive (describing how a pattern changes from one step to another) and functional (describing the relationship between two columns or rows of numbers in a table of values).
- In creating linear relations that are functional for a given pattern, have students represent and extend the pattern in a table of values, describe the patterns shown in the table and use these patterns to write a functional relationship or a formula in terms of the step number. Have students use the created formula or the functional linear relation to calculate the 20th or 50th entry in the table (Van de Walle and Lovin 2006).
C. Choosing Learning Activities
Learning Activities are examples of activities that could be used to develop student understanding of the concepts identified in Step 1.
Grade 7
