These activities have been used by teachers both for A. honing their own skills for solving, and creating themselves, problem settings which require one to translate from verbal description to a graph, or vice versa; and B. for use as-is or suitably modified to fit their grade level(s) and student backgrounds, for direct use in K-12 settings.

Graph your story is less complex and should probably be done before A week in the life of Sue. Both of these activities focus on verbal-to-graphical. The course also uses activities that require graphical information to be converted into verbal information (or into tables or formulas), in particular, Conceptual Algebra uses materials from the Connected Mathematics Project (CMP) and Mathematics in Context (MiC) as well as from the Driscoll textbook.

In Graphing Height this work of translating is taken to a higher teachers level in a way somewhat reminiscent of the Meta-cognition activity ("Pedagogical Issues to Keep in Mind During and After Problem-Solving") the receding, Problem-Solving, Patterns, and Meta-Cognition section. In particular, after solving the exercise alone and then comparing notes with fellow teachers in their group, teachers are asked to create a rubric they would use for grading/assessing student solutions. (For example, are axes labeled? Does the graph reflect that height is not zero when one is born? Etc).

This can help you as a teacher on many levels: the mathematics content is made clearer when you force yourself to write up such a rubric; pedagogical issues are clarified as well (what misconceptions or gaps in knowledge are suggested to you as a teacher if a certain rubric item is not done well by a student? And how might you remedy this?); and finally it can provide you as a teacher with practice in how to assess "in depth" and written work by students (many ADEPT graduates have commented that being forced to be on the student end of written work in mathematics, along with introspective exercises such as these, have helped them gain both confidence and skills towards readiness to give and assess written work in their own mathematics classes) in a way that is compatible with both deeper learning for students, and compatible with state and national mandates.