The Coordinate Plane

This month my PreAlgebra class is focused on the coordinate plane. We started off just graphing points. I stole this from another teacher, but this trick seems to work well to remind them how to graph a point. I tell them to imagine we want to get on an elevator. We have to walk to the elevator first, before we can go up or down. This helps them to remember to go along the x-axis first and then go up for the y-value. We then have to focus on taking an equation, making a table of solutions, and graph those solutions. I try to incorporate as much vocabulary as I can when doing this. I always call the list of x-values the domain and the list of y-values the range. I also insist they call x the independent variable and y the dependent variable. That way the vocabulary is becoming cemented in their minds before I ask a specific question on it.