Graphing Fun

Sunday, January 12, 2020

Wow, we cannot believe we are zooming into the middle of January already!  Our first week back was terrific--slow to get things finished--but terrific all the same.

We just wanted to quickly share a couple of graphing activities and programs we did with our math groups.  One of the end goals with my particular lesson, was to have my students teach Anne's students a new graphing program. Up until this point, my math group has not had the opportunity to be the "teachers."

Anne and I introduced our students to collecting data, making tally tables, and putting the information into bar graphs before winter break.  We showed the BrainPop Jr. video on graphs, and did an old Everyday Math graphing lesson.  The lesson was fun because it had to do with how many letters were in our first or last names.  We also introduced the students to analyzing the data to find the minimum and maximum numbers, range, median, and mode.  On a side note, there is a more advanced version of graphs in Brain Pop.

At that point, Anne's math group was then ready to generate questions and categories about favorite winter activities.  They collected data from their own math group, as well as from my math group.  They made their own tally tables to record the information they gathered, and they entered the information into  Google Sheets to create a bar graph.  Once the graphs were complete, groups of students analyzed the information wrote three statements about it.

After winter break, I wanted to make my groups' graphing experience a bit more concrete.  As a whole class, we graphed how many of each Christmas-shaped eraser were in a bag.  We first made a tally chart so we could record our information. Then, we dumped the shapes onto the carpet. One by one the students took turns picking out an eraser from the pile, and we all recorded a tally in the correct column on our tally table.  The students were focused from the word "Go," because of the novelty of this math lesson, as well as the movement.

The students had more fun using the program Create A Graph, to enter the data and create a bar graph.  They loved choosing different colors for the bars and seeing the words and numbers morph into a graph!   Once the graphs were printed, we looked at the information and wrote statements about what we noticed, including the minimum and maximum numbers, range and median number.

Then it was time for the kids to do the exact same activity in small groups.  This time, the erasers were just a mix of various shapes.   Below are pictures.

This is one of the group's graphs from Create A Graph.

Friday, Anne's group of students taught my students how to generate a question and categories about winter, create a tally table, and survey the kids in the room.  Monday, my students will show Anne's students how to enter the information into Create A Graph, download it to their drive and print it.  Together, they will analyze their information.  I will add pictures to this post tomorrow night, as long as everything comes together as planned.

We will also show them two other videos we just found from Maths With Jacob.  I really like the graphing video because it gives a quick overview about different types of graphs.  As a morning warm-up, the students will answer questions about a line plot graph.  They will have learned about it from the video, and I took a screen shot of a line plot poster from A Math's Dictionary For Kids. This will give the students further information about line plots so they can complete the warm-up.

Created by Jenny Eather.

Knowing how much fun the next few days in math are going to be, Anne and I cannot wait for math time. Tuesday, we will begin our Snowman STEM activity that introduces/reviews 3-D shapes to the kids.



Have a great week!
Kim and Anne

Happy New Year!

January 4, 2020

Happy New Year, everyone!  Hopefully you had a wonderfully relaxing holiday spent just the way you envisioned it for yourself.  Anne and I just wanted to share a few things we are going to do with our students on Tuesday.

The Curriculum Corner has January Welcome messages that are great to warm-up those brains when the students walk into the classroom. 

They also have cool Did You Know? January discussion cards.  They are great to read and discuss as we line up to go home. 

Anne and I found this Jack Prelutsky poem years ago and have been using it ever since.  We have the students read it and then work with a partner to answer questions.  This year I tweaked the questions a bit.  To get everyone in a celebratory mood, we buy New Year's Eve hats for the kids wear as they work. 

Reading  Squirrel's New Year's Resolution by Pat Miller was something we started last year.  This adorable story gives students a very tangible idea of what it means to have a New Year's resolution.

A new read aloud for us is One Word From Sophia by Jim Averback.  The story goes perfectly with one-word goal writing project we will do with our students.

We are combining two "one-word" ideas.  The first one comes from Thinker Builder.  It is called What's Your Word?  We will use the first page of his activity because it is a planning and brainstorming sheet. 

The writing project will come from One Little Word by Lindsay Flood.  In her activity, the students write their word, explain why they chose the word and write one way they will accomplish the goal in their personal life and one way they will accomplish their goal in their academic life.  Lastly, the student draw a picture of themselves trying to accomplish the goal.  We love that this inspires the students to visualize themselves meeting their goal.  Start with the end in mind, right?  Habit #2 will be discussed a lot during this lesson.  A cute twist on this idea is that Lindsay has the students write hashtag synonyms of their goal word. 

Here is my example.

Call me crazy, but if we have time, I thought I would have the kids watch one of the videos on making New Year's stars to decorate our bulletin board where these One-Word goals will be posted.

Anne and I did spend time revising lessons and putting them in our Teachers Pay Teachers store. 

Here's the link if you're interested in taking a peek.

Our link!

Lon Po Po is one of our favorite tales.  It connects with so many of our social studies and reading topics.  Our goal was to tap into students' creative and divergent thinking.  The activities very much do that, but the stand out is the interview the students write to portray the various perspectives of the wolf, the protagonist, and the reader.  They then record the interview in a podcast and publish it.  So fun!!!!

We wish everyone an exciting week back at school.  We cannot wait to see the kids and hear all about their time off.  Then, we can hit the ground running with fun learning and social emotional activities.

Kim and Anne