Details about 5.OA.3

[noamszoke]

5.OA.3 states:
5.OA.3 – Generate two numerical patterns using two given rules. Identify apparent relationships between corresponding terms. Form ordered pairs consisting of corresponding terms from the two patterns, and graph the ordered pairs on a coordinate plane. For example, given the rule “Add 3” and the starting number 0, and given the rule “Add 6” and the starting number 0, generate terms in the resulting sequences, and observe that the terms in one sequence are twice the corresponding terms in the other sequence. Explain informally why this is so.

The North Carolina unpacked document gives two examples of this standard. In the first example, Sam and Terri catch fish at a different rate. Their information is captured in one table, then graphed in two separate lines, and those are compared. The second example is treated differently. Rather than graph each rule separately, as in the fish problem, they graph the two rules against each other.

Those examples are posted here.

My question: Are 5th graders supposed to see both ways? If so, where do we put the emphasis?

Thank you for your insight!

Noam

[Anonymous]

It seems to me that the first example in the NC document misses the mark when it asks students to make a line graph and interpret the graph. First off, given the fact that a line graph has Sam catching half a fish, halfway through the first day, I think we can say that a line graph isn’t even appropriate for this example. Second, the emphasis here isn’t interpreting graphs but rather looking for relationships between the corresponding terms of the two patterns. The point of the ordered pairs is to display the values in a way that helps students see the relationships between them, and the graphing supports 5.G.2.

I’m thinking this standard is much less complicated than the NC document makes it out to be.

[Bill McCallum]

I agree with abieniek here. Basically this standard is a prelude to understanding relationships between two quantities. If you generate two different patterns, you can then compare them and see how they vary together. Without actually seeing the NC example, I can imagine on person catching 2 fish per day, the other catching 1 fish per day, and then you would notice that the numbers for the first person are twice the number for the second person. Later, in Grade 6, students will make tables of ratios expressing the same fact, and in Grade 7 they will record this using the equation y = 2x. At any rate, in Grade 5, they should be recording the ordered pairs made by pairing the number of fish caught by person 1 versus the number of fish caught by person 2; not the two lines graphing each person’s catch as a function of the number of days (which would come much later).

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