Telling a Story
Making Graphs from Stories and Stories from Graphs
In this activity you'll continue exploring the relationship between
graphs and stories.
This activity will give you practice creating a graph from a story and telling the details of motions from a graph.
You will create a graph from a model of a bank robbery from the points-of-view of the thiefs and the police.
Finally, you will create your own story about a train traveling between several stations from a graph.
Go on to the next step.
The Pony Express
Laramie, Wyoming is 50 miles west of Cheyenne. Along the way between
them there are two towns. Twenty miles west of Cheyenne is Granite
and Buford is 10 miles beyond Granite. On the route, there are mile
markers every 10 miles as shown below. The pony express needs to
make a delivery from Cheyenne to Laramie. Below is the story of how
it traveled. Draw a graph that tells the story of the Pony Express's
trip.
- The Pony Express travels from Cheyenne to Granite in 2 hours.
- In Granite, the pony and rider take a 1 hour rest.
- Then they leave Granite and reach Buford in 1 hour, but there, the pony throws a shoe.
- To fix the shoe, they have to go back to Granite. The pony has to limp back, so it takes 2 hours.
- In Granite they get a fresh pony, and leave for Laramie.
- There are no more stops, and the pony and rider arrive in 2 hours.
Place labels on the graph to show the approximate locations of the four towns, then submit your graph.
The Bank Job
There has been a bank heist. Draw the stories of the Robbers and the
Police on the graph below. Play the graph to check if it is correct,
then press
Submit
.
Robbers’ Story: Bank robbers leave their yellow house travelling slowly toward the bank. The trip takes 6 minutes. They stop in front of the bank, and take 2 minutes to rob the bank. Then they leave the bank and drive very fast back toward their house. In 2 minutes they reach the forest and hear a police siren, get scared, and turn around, heading toward the bank. They drive very fast, but in 1 minute the police overtake them and bring them to a stop.
Police’s Story: Four minutes after the robbers left their house, the police, who have been at the station, drive to the forest in 4 minutes where they set up a routine speed trap. Shortly, their radar picks up a car headed toward them going too fast, and they turn on their siren. The police see the speeding car turn around, and they chase the car in hot pursuit. In 1 minute they bring the car to a stop, and then find out it’s the robbers and arrest them.
A Race!
The graph below tells a story about a race between Isabel and
Shanice. Use this graph to help you answer the questions. Remember
to submit your answers.
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Be sure to scroll to the bottom of the page and answer all four sequences of questions. |
Creating a story
The position of a train traveling between three stations is shown on
the graph below. Distances are in miles, and time is in minutes.
Station A is at position 0, Station B is at position 10, and Station
C is at position 25. Create a story about a train trip that matches
the graph. Feel free to invent characters and actions. What might
have happened, for example, after 35 minutes?
After you submit your story you'll be able to see some of the class' stories on the next page if your teacher chooses several and releases them for viewing.
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The End
When you are done, you may close this activity. Your answers are
saved automatically.
Graph Source data page
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This page is to provide source data for the train story. It is
not for student use.
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Notes to/from Author