Middle School Math: Functions Leading to Linear Relationships

This webinar will present an overview of one of the four units, soon to be accessible to AMTA members, designed to integrate Modeling Instruction pedagogy into the middle school mathematics classroom. Specifically, this session will cover the unit on Functions Leading to Linear Relations. It will allocate time for participants to examine and discuss pivotal activities and the storyline of the unit.

The activities within this unit align with middle school mathematics standards and can be tailored to suit various grade levels, spanning from elementary to high school. The unit emphasizes practical, real-world instances of interconnected quantities, prompting students to depict these relationships using data tables, graphs, verbal explanations, and eventually, formulas. As a result, students develop an operational understanding of functions as relationships between quantities, distinctly recognizing linear relationships as one type of functional relationship, without this idea being obscured by mathematical formalism.