Year 6: Understanding Direction with Integers Lesson Sequence

Develop understanding of positive and negative integers with this focused lesson sequence, designed to build students' conceptual understanding through explicit teaching, visual models and guided practice. Students explore how integers are used to represent direction and distance on horizontal and vertical number lines, learn to interpret and follow sequential movements using positive and negative values, and apply this understanding through engaging robot programming contexts that involve tracking movement from zero and determining final positions.

Note: Get the most from this lesson by using it with the matching teacher slides and independent student activities. Click here to view the bundle.

Built around the I Do, We Do, You Do model, this lesson sequence guides students from explicit instruction to supported practice and independent application. Through modelled examples, collaborative discussion and structured mathematics tasks, students investigate positive and negative movement, track sequential changes on horizontal and vertical number lines, interpret robot movement instructions, and explain their mathematical reasoning using precise mathematical language.

What's included in this teacher resource?

• Comprehensive lesson sequence focused on representing and interpreting positive and negative integers on horizontal and vertical number lines
• Clear learning intention and success criteria centred on identifying direction and distance using positive and negative integers
• Explicit instruction and modelled examples demonstrating how to track robot movements step-by-step from zero
• Guided practice tasks supporting students to follow and represent movements accurately on horizontal and vertical number lines
• Activities that develop understanding of positive and negative movement through robot programming, decoding and debugging tasks
• Opportunities for students to explain and justify their reasoning using mathematical language
• Built-in check-ins for learning to monitor understanding throughout the lesson
• A formative exit ticket to assess understanding of tracking movement and determining final positions using integers

Perfect for upper primary classrooms, this lesson sequence develops students' conceptual understanding of positive and negative integers while building confidence interpreting direction, tracking movement and determining final positions on horizontal and vertical number lines. Students strengthen their mathematical reasoning through engaging robot programming activities that connect abstract integer concepts to purposeful problem-solving.

Format: PDF

Aligned to Australian Curriculum Outcome: Recognise situations, including financial contexts, that use integers; locate and represent integers on a number line and as coordinates on the Cartesian plane (AC9M6N01)

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