Online Coordinate Plane Games

I wanted to find a few online games for my students to play so they can strengthen their graphing skills.  My students love playing games and the more I use games to  help them practice, the more likely they are do develop the skills.

The Math is Fun website has a lovely game called Hit the Coordinate.  You have your choice of levels and using one or all the quadrants.  Once the perimeters have been set, the game is on.  I chose to use all four quadrants.  A coordinate flashed and I used my spotter to find the actual point and shot.  If I were right, I'd get points, if wrong then no points are awarded.  The thing that makes this different is that the look of the coordinate plane changes with each problem.

Math Playground has a lovely game called Locate the Aliens.   In this game, an alien appears on the coordinate grid.  It is your job to type in the location of the alien.  If you are right, you gain a point and another appears.  If you are wrong, you hear a funky noise and the coordinates of the "Lost Alien" appear in the box.  This is a timed game but if played regularly, a student can get better at identifying coordinates.

Math Playground has a second game called Space Boy Rescue where coordinates are flashed and you place the space boy in that location to rescue the alien.  If the rescuer is not placed correctly, the player is told immediately.  In fact, there is immediate feedback of great job or you missed the alien so a student knows immediately if they did it correctly.  The person has 90 seconds to rescue as many aliens as possible.

Another game at Mr Nussbaum's site has a Stock the Shelf game requires students to stock the shelves with 20 drinks in 2 minutes.  A location on the coordinate grid is flashed to the side next to the drink and the student is required to place the drink in that location.  If the student chooses a wrong location, an x appears and the student is told to try again.  This game offers a tablet version for the iPad.

Finally is the Coordinate Jeopardy for those days you want a bit of team actions.  You can set it so you have up to four teams.  There are three topics with four questions each.  If a team answers incorrectly, they loose points but if they answer correctly, they get points.   The three topics are Graphing Points, Quadrants and Axis, Coordinates.  The program automatically flips the coin to determine which team goes first.  The questions are ready to go and this is the type of game you could project to involve the students.

Although these games are listed for upper elementary, lower performing middle and high school students  will enjoy these games.