Linear Relations Guess Who

Can You Guess Who?

My Grade 9 Math Summer Session students are often having difficulty making connections between the different representations of a linear relation, i.e. recognizing how the same linear relation can be represented by a table of values, a graph, and an equation.  While browsing through Pinterest for more math game inspiration, I stumbled upon Guess Who - Linear Functions from "i is a number".  This seemed like a great concept for encouraging students to practise analyzing and comparing different representations of linear relations more confidently and quickly!  I adapted the cards to create my own "Linear Relations" Guess Who? for Grade 9 Math.

Making the Game:

Luckily, I was able to find an old Guess Who? set from my local Value Village.  Only the game boards themselves are needed, so no worrying about missing cards when buying the game used.  Make sure to double check that the game boards are not broken, however.  One of the white plastic frames from the blue game board had broken off, so I had to MacGyver a new one using a white paperclip and a hot glue gun.  It works, but did not turn out the prettiest (which is why I only included a picture of the red game board).

For my purposes, I chose not to include the written representations and only include tables of values, graphs, and equations.  Here are the small cards for my "Linear Relations" Guess Who.  I would have shared the large cards (Mystery cards) as well but for some reason the formatting of the large cards did not translate well from Microsoft Office to Google Docs.  Fortunately, the large cards have the same images as the small ones, and their size does not need to be as specific.  Two copies of the small cards are required: one on pink/red card stock and one on blue.  For the large Mystery cards, I chose a neutral but easy to read colour.

Note: If you find the small cards are falling out during use, consider sticking a piece of tape across the back of the frame.  Some people glue the cards to the frame, but you may want to swap out the cards to differentiate for different levels or to practise other skills.

Playing the Game:

Goal:

Guess your opponent's Mystery card before your opponent guesses yours.

Rules:

Ask one yes or no question per turn to eliminate any game board pictures (small cards) that do not fit the Mystery card's description.  If you make a wrong guess, you lose the game; so do not guess until you are sure!

The following are just some examples of yes or no questions you could ask:

• Does your linear relation have a positive slope?
• Does the equation represent a partial variation?
• Does your graph have a negative y-intercept?
• Etc.

While your students are playing, keep an ear out for the kinds of questions students are asking each other.  "i is a number" brought up a good point: a question such as "is it a graph?" technically fits the description of a yes or no question, but does not involve any analysis.  For my cards, however, I feel it may be necessary to narrow the options down to one final card.  One of my learning goals for this activity is to determine other representations of a linear relation, given one representation; because of this, a table of values, graph, and equation could all be described using the same properties and characteristics, making it necessary to clarify the representation as well.