Pop-Up Books

Students learn common functions in math by creating a pop up booklet that tells a creative story with graphs. Utilizing parent functions and/or inequalities, students are able to make a variety of trajectories for the characters and scenes in their stories and demonstrate them in pop-up form. For example, the square root function could represent a plateau, or a quadratic function could depict a large hill. By the end of their story, students will have a better understanding of the parent functions and their characteristics. Students can use measurements given below to create a basic template, or use a scaled version of their own making. Examples provided here were cut by hand, but for a professional look, students can use a drawing program to create the graphs, and a vinyl cutter to cut the pages.Students may work individually to create their own stories, or combine pages to make a group story. This project will take about two to six hours to complete and can be presented as a library of booklets or as an individual storytelling presentation. Students do not need any prior experience making pop-ups but should be proficient with scissors or craft knives or have access to a vinyl/paper cutter.