Dependent and independent variables worksheets

A gym costs $25 to join and $12 a month. You choose the months; the cost follows. These free printable worksheets ask which way round that goes — the sentence a sixth-grader needs before y = mx + b can mean anything.

If they get stuck

Dependent and independent variables
Dependent and independent variables worksheet — Which follows from which, and its rule, free printable with answer key

The answer key prints on a separate page.

What's on this sheet

Two quantities in a situation are almost never equal partners. One is chosen and the other follows from it, and naming which is which is the whole of this standard. Every question here gives a real situation and four statements about it: the right one, the same relationship backwards, and the two NUMBERS in the sentence offered as if they varied. That last pair is the useful trap — $12 a month is a rate, not a quantity that changes.

Why this sheet works

The second setting puts the same situation in a table and asks which equation fits. The table is built from the sentence rather than invented, so the rule really is the story’s rule, and the wrong answers are the mistakes a student actually makes: the rate and the starting amount swapped, the starting amount dropped, and the first column’s total read as the rate.