A gym charges $25 to join and $12 a month. Which number is the rate and which is the start? These free printable worksheets give a short situation and ask for the rule — y = mx + b — with both numbers marked as one answer.
If they get stuck
The answer key prints on a separate page.
The site already writes a line from two points; this is the step before that, and it is a reading step as much as an algebra one. The sentence gives two numbers and does not say which is which, and "the first number is b" is a habit that works half the time — so half the stories name the starting amount first ("$3 to hire, then $2 a mile") and half name the rate ("20 L draining a minute from a 300 L tank").
The shrinking stories are their own setting because they are where the marks go: a tank draining, an account being spent, a room cooling. Nothing in the sentence is negative and the rule needs a minus sign. Every one of them is built to last at least three steps, so no question is a tank that is empty on day two.
Find the start and the rate, then write the rule
