Free to use and free to share. There is no sign-up, no score, and nothing a child does here is recorded or sent anywhere.
Practise it now
Drag the track to play the cards and watch the outline move. Then say where corner C finished.
This exercise practises plot or read a coordinate alongside its own main skill, Composing Transformations.
It covers most of this skill rather than all of it.
Loading the interactive exercise. Nothing you do here is saved or scored.
A worked example
One question of the kind this skill is tested with, worked all the way through: the reasoning, and what the wrong answers are there to catch.
Writing a point as a pair of coordinates
What are the coordinates of point B?
Follow the x-axis to 6, then the y-axis to 1.
Plotted on the grid: B at (6, 1).
(6, -1)
(1, 6)
(6, 1)
(-6, 1)
Answer: (6, 1)
How you get there
B is 6 right of the origin and 1 above it, so point B is written (6, 1). Writing (1, 6) instead would describe a different place on the grid, because the across number always comes first.
Why the other answers tempt
Counting squares from the origin gives the distance, but the sign says which side of the axis the point is on.
If they are stuck, say this
Read across the x-axis first and then up or down the y-axis - the first number in the pair is always the across one.
Drag the track to play the cards and watch the outline move. Then say where corner C finished.
This engine’s own main skill is Composing Transformations. It practises plot or read a coordinate alongside it, and covers most of it rather than all.
The programme is “Flip in the line y = x”, then “Slide 2 right, 3 down”. Taking the cards one at a time, a flip in y = x SWAPS the two numbers: (x, y) becomes (y, x), and no sign changes at all; and then a slide adds the same pair of numbers to every corner: (x, y) becomes (x + 2, y − 3). Corner C starts at (-2, 3) and finishes at (5, -5). The order matters as much as the cards do: each card acts on wherever the shape has got to, not on where it started, so playing them the other way round can leave the shape somewhere else entirely.
Step 1. Play it. Drag the fold track all the way across to play both cards, then scrub back and forth.
Step 2. Where did it land?. Now the question: where does corner C finish?
What to say if they get stuck
Scrub the track slowly, and back again. The pale outlines show every place the shape stopped.
Follow corner C on its own rather than the whole shape - it leaves a dotted trail.
a slide adds the same pair of numbers to every corner: (x, y) becomes (x + 2, y − 3).
Reads the vertical coordinate before the horizontal coordinate.
This is the wrong answer 11+ papers are built to offer, so it is worth watching for directly: a child who does this will look confident and still lose the mark. If it keeps happening on plot or read a coordinate, the fix is the misunderstanding rather than more questions.
How plot or read a coordinate differs from the skills beside it
The same exercise practises several skills, and telling them apart is often the difficulty rather than the exercise itself. On this page the skill is: read or place one point on a coordinate grid, and it stops where axis range and quadrant are explicit.
Apply three stated rotations or reflections in order. Exactly three transformations are composed. One-step and two-step transformations have separate skills.
Questions parents ask about plot or read a coordinate
Answered from what the skill map records about this skill, not from a template. Every answer here is on the page, and the same questions are the page's FAQ structured data.
Read or place one point on a coordinate grid. It is one of 55 named maths skills in the 11+, in the geometry strand, and this page carries 1 interactive exercise that practises it.
There is a specific mistake recorded against this skill: reads the vertical coordinate before the horizontal coordinate. 11+ papers are written to offer exactly that answer, so a child can be confident and still lose the mark. When it keeps happening, the fix is the misunderstanding rather than more questions.
Point at the next move rather than explaining the whole rule. Read across the x-axis first and then up or down the y-axis - the first number in the pair is always the across one.
The skill map draws the line here: Axis range and quadrant are explicit. A question past that line is testing a different named maths skill, which is worth knowing before you spend a week practising the wrong one.
The geometry strand holds 15 skills that are tested together, and the pages next to plot or read a coordinate are preserve measure under a rigid transformation, reflect a coordinate and reflect a shape. Each has its own exercise and its own link, and none of them needs an account.
Use The Transformation Deck, embedded on this page. It is the exercise the skill map attaches to plot or read a coordinate, it runs in the browser with no account to make, nothing is scored, and nothing a child does here is recorded or sent anywhere. It also has its own link, so you can send it to a child without sending them anywhere else first.
One wrong answer is a slip, the same wrong answer every time is a habit
A free diagnostic looks at which mistakes repeat across all four subjects, not just whether plot or read a coordinate was right on the day.
