Data Collection and Graphing

Ms. Meyers, a primary grades teacher, is designing a unit on data collection and graphing for her math class. As part of the standards, students are expected to understand how to formulate questions that can be addressed with data, and to gather, record, organize, and describe data. To address this standard, as well as the 21st Century Skills of visual and information literacy, collaboration, and communication, the teacher plans a unit for her 9-year-old students.

Ms. Meyers addresses these standards through a lesson that combines both hands on and virtual activities. She introduces the lesson by asking her students to pick a colored sticky-note based on the number of brothers and sisters they have, blue for none, yellow for one, pink for two, etc. She then writes the numbers 1 through 10 on the board and the students post their sticky notes in a column above the number of their siblings, which forms a bar chart. The bars of sticky-notes are a little uneven and Ms. Meyers discusses how this might make it inaccurate.

After this basic demonstration of creating a bar graph, Ms. Meyers introduces Cacoo, a tool that will generate bar graphs more easily. She asks the students to tell her their favorite colors and shows them how to make the bar chart about their favorite colors using this tool. *

In order to help the students learn how to use the tool, Ms. Meyers groups the students in pairs. Each student has a laptop computer. She has used Moodle to bookmark a website for a bar chart program she previously demonstrated. She then distributes dice to each pair of students. Each time a student rolls the dice, the other student records the total number using the bar chart tool the teacher has shown them. They then use the bar chart program to create a representation of that data.

The students compare their results with those of others in the class and learn vocabulary for describing the distribution of the results. Ms. Meyers realizes that the students may need some structure for this activity to ensure each student can participate equally. Before they begin this activity, she and the class create the following rule for how the students in each pair will share the tasks of rolling the dice and recording the numbers in the bar chart tool. Rule: One student will roll the dice 5 times while the other person records the total number. Then they will switch roles.

Students then complete additional activities to generate and represent data. For example, she has the students access a virtual spinner she has bookmarked in Moodle that serves as a random number generator. When the student clicks on a button next to the spinner the arrow spins and points to a number between one and six. Again, the students use the bar chart tool to represent their data and compare their results with the rest of the class.

Ms. Meyers thinks that she would also like to engage her students in collecting data to answer real-world questions. For homework, she asks the students to collect data to answer a question about their neighborhood, such as the number of buildings on the block where they live, the number of cars parked on that block, or another question about quantities of things in their neighborhood of their choosing. They use their smartphones or tablets to email the question they investigated, and the answer, to the address designated by the teacher. The next day, Ms. Meyers collects that data and shares it with the class. The students continue to use their laptops to construct bar charts to represent that data.

Once they create these graphs, each pair copies their graph to a page of a PowerPoint template created by the teacher. Each page of the template has a box for a question and another for the graph representing responses to this question. When all the graphs have been entered into the template, the whole class practices interpreting graphs by reading the students' questions and using the graph to find the answers.

*As an alternative or additional activity to the real world sticky note activity, the students could use the flowchart function in Cacoo to create and label a sticky note bar graph.

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