Observe students as they write and solve questions about the
Handful of Buttons data in the Write Problems about the Data
section in the Teacher Guide to assess their abilities to use a
table or graph to solve problems about a data set [E10].
Have students compare the information on the data table and graph.
Ask open-ended questions similar to the following:
- How is the data table like the graph? (Possible
responses: Both the data table and the graph have
the same labels: Number of Students and
Number of Buttons. The numbers across the bottom
of the graph are the same as the numbers in
the left column of the data table.
- How are the data table and graph different from
each other? (Possible response: The data table
has numbers that show the number of students
and the graph has bars.)
- Do they show the same information? (yes)
- If they have the same information, why do you
think we make both? (Possible response: They
show the data in different ways. The graph has
bars instead of numbers and it’s easier to see the
most and least common.)
- When do you think you might want to use the data
table and when might you use the graph? Why?
(Possible response: If I want to add all the numbers
or compare intervals, I would use the data
table because it’s easier to see the numbers. If I
want to see which interval is most or least common,
I would look at the graph because you can
see which bar is the tallest or shortest.)
Since there are many things one could say about the graph, it
is a good time to encourage participation from students who
may be less confident or reluctant to contribute.
Write Problems about the Data. Give each student
half of a piece of paper folded in half. Have students
make up a problem about the graph or data table for
their partners to solve. For example, how many students
drew more than 51 buttons? Ask students to
write the question on the front of the folded paper.
When they are both done, they should trade papers
and solve each other’s problem. They should write
their solution on the inside of the folded paper. They
can then trade back to check each other’s solutions.
These questions and solutions can be displayed
around the graph.
Provide examples or cloze statements for students that need
additional support to write a problem about the graph. For
example:
- How many students have more/less than _______
buttons?
- How many student have between ________ and
________ buttons?
- How many more students have ________ than
________?
