Matching a Verbal Description to a Graph

Last week we were studying matching Verbal Descriptions to a graph.  Some students are naturally good at this, and others really struggle.  Despite my best efforts to teach this topic, when looking at a Speed v. Time graph that increases and then decreases, many students will invariably choose the answer choice that indicates someone is walking up a hill and then down a hill.

I decided to try an interactive approach this year and selected twelve graphs and 18 verbal descriptions.  I had the students cut out the verbal descriptions and then work together in groups to match the descriptions to the graphs.  This activity turned out to be quite difficult for many of the students and looking back, I decided that having six incorrect answers was just too much and made the activity unnecessarily difficult.  I reworked the activity to include only three incorrect answers in an effort to make it a little less time consuming.

You can download the activity here.