So the website graphing stories is possibly the best thing to happen to graphing information in an algebra class ever.
The text book I use as support would teach graphing with an insane amount of text, most of it very technical, but when I showed students the video of someone using the benchpress it is immediately identifiable, and in the video when he struggles students can immediately understand the nuance of the situation. I had budgeted fifteen minutes for the exercise and thought I'd get through two of them. I spent thirty and barely finished two. The conversation for the most part was engaged and interested in the concepts.
The one caveat i would use is that some time needs to be taken at the beginning to discuss what the shape of the graph should look like before hand. For example for the bum height video, discuss that the slide has "bumps" in it and what that means. I stopped the videos often and stressed that I was not grading on complete accuracy on these, but wanted to make certain that the students understood the shape of what was happening.
The text book I use as support would teach graphing with an insane amount of text, most of it very technical, but when I showed students the video of someone using the benchpress it is immediately identifiable, and in the video when he struggles students can immediately understand the nuance of the situation. I had budgeted fifteen minutes for the exercise and thought I'd get through two of them. I spent thirty and barely finished two. The conversation for the most part was engaged and interested in the concepts.
The one caveat i would use is that some time needs to be taken at the beginning to discuss what the shape of the graph should look like before hand. For example for the bum height video, discuss that the slide has "bumps" in it and what that means. I stopped the videos often and stressed that I was not grading on complete accuracy on these, but wanted to make certain that the students understood the shape of what was happening.