Tips to Helping Your Seventh Grader Plot Points in Their Math Homework

Helping Your Child to Plot Points with Graphs

If your child's seventh grade math curriculum is based on the Common Core State Standards, then he or she will be required to learn how to plot points with graphs. Familiarizing yourself with these standards can help you stay up to date with what your child needs to comprehend. Because plotting points can be a bit tricky for many kids at first, have a chat with your child's math teacher; he or she may be able to give you advice specific to your child and even offer you math-learning materials that can help.

The Internet can also be a valuable resource when it comes to finding free information, worksheets and quizzes relating to plotting mathematical data. The following are a few different types of problems your child is likely to encounter.

Plotting Points on Coordinate Graphs

In your child's homework, it's likely that he or she will be required to plot points on a coordinate graph, which is a graph that has an x- and y-axis. Your child will be given a coordinate on the graph, such as (2,3). He or she will then be required to find this coordinate and draw a dot there.

Think of every coordinate as (x,y); the first number is x-coordinate and the second number is the y-coordinate. For the point (2,3), you would first identify the x-coordinate, which is 2. From the origin (0,0), move 2 units to the right and put a mark there to remember it for later.

Now you have to find the y-coordinate, which is 3. From the origin, move 3 units up. All you have to do now is find where the x- and y-coordinates meet. This is the point (2,3).

Calculating the Slope of a Line

Calculating the slope of a line on a graph is typically known as a 'rise/run'. If a line has a slope of 1, think of it as 1/1; as a result, the slope will 'rise' by 1 unit and 'run' (or move horizontally) by 1 unit. Similarly, if a line has a slope of 2, you can think of it as 2/1. So, it will increase (rise) by 2 units and 'run' by 1 unit.

When plotting a line in seventh grade, students learn to use the equation y = mx + b. This equation makes plotting lines easy because 'm' represents the slope of the line and 'b' represents the y-intercept. So, if your child was given the problem y = 2x + 1, then he or she could easily tell that the slope of the line is 2 and it intercepts the y-axis at the point (0,1).