I came in ready to start the math portion of the unit getting to know what the students knew about graphs, but after I visited the kindergarten room, I came away with the idea for a name graph.
The name graph picture showed squares with letters on it lined up like a bar graph (like what is shown above).
Especially after seeing what they knew (or thought they knew) about graphs, this was appealing since it was straight-forward and seemed like a good way to get them into graphing.
But this graph has been more than I had expected. It is allowing me to:
- have the students start to learn how to develop questions from data
- go into addition and subtraction concepts. My question for them today was, "How many ways can you get ten letters with the names?" My next will be to assign a point value for each letter and have them add and subtract with them.
- introduce averaging (thank you CD!)
- introduce multiplication and division concepts
- get them engaged
- find and sort
My next step after I use this graph for a while is to include other classes and have them predict outcomes.
What I did not do, and I wish I had, was ask them the questions I did before we did the graph. For example, I wish I had asked them how many students have the same number of letters in our class and watched them try to figure it out. They should know that graphs are good because of their visual nature.
I will correct that mistake that when we expand to graphing another class.
No comments:
Post a Comment