Lesson 2

Getting to Know Room 204 a Little Better

Est. Class Sessions: 2

Summarizing the Lesson

Direct attention back to your class graph. Ask students to answer the same question about their class graph as is asked in Question 9 in the Student Guide about Room 204's graph:

Ask:

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  • What story does our graph tell?

Develop questions that require students to interpret the graph and use the data in it to solve the problem, similar to Question 10. Make up other questions that will require simple computation with the data in the graph. Have students pose questions that can be answered by using the data in the graph and have other students answer the questions. See the Sample Dialog.

For example, ask:

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  • Where are the tallest bars on our graph?
  • Are they clustered together or spread out?
  • What does that tell us about the students in our class?
  • Are our two tallest bars about half the class? How do you know?
  • What is the mode for our data? Which value shows up the most?

After discussing your class graph, have students complete the Check-In: Questions 11–14 in the Student Guide. They will need a piece of Centimeter Graph Paper.

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Interpreting Numerical Data in Tables and Graphs.

This discussion refers to the data in Figure 3.

Teacher: What is the largest number of pets?

Maya: 6

Teacher: Six what?

Maya: Six pets.

Teacher: How do you know? Where can you look to find that answer?

Maya: I look at the numbers at the bottom of the graph and go across and the last one is 6.

Teacher: What do the numbers that go along the bottom of the graph tell you? Are they the Number of Pets or Number of Students?

Jackie: Number of Pets.

Teacher: What is the least number of pets? Where can you look to find that answer?

Jackie: You can look on the table or graph. Four people have zero pets. So, that's the least. I looked at the numbers at the bottom of the graph.

Teacher: What is the most common number of pets?

Linda: The number 2.

Teacher: Two what?

Linda: Two pets.

Teacher: How do you know?

Linda: Because I picked 2 and went across and 2 had the tallest bar.

Teacher: How many students have 2 pets? Where can you look to find out? Come and show us.

Linda: 7. Look at the data table and look for the most number of students here [points to the 3rd column in the data table] and you see it's 7 and then you go over here [points to the 1st column] and you see that it is 2 pets.

Teacher: How many students have 5 pets? How do you know?

Keenya: You go to the graph where it says Number of Pets and go to the 5 bar, then go up to see the number 3.

Teacher: Where do you go to see the number 3?

Keenya: You go to the left where it says Number of Students.

Teacher: What is the shape of the graph? What story does it tell you?

Jerome: I don't know what you mean.

Teacher: Where are the tallest and shortest bars?

Jerome: They're taller at the beginning than at the end.

Teacher: What does that tell you about the number of pets students have?

Jerome: The kids in our class don't have too many pets, like two or less. Not many kids have more than two.

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Use students' responses to Check-In: Questions 11–14 and the corresponding Feedback Box to assess whether they can identify variables and values [E1], distinguish between categorical and numerical variables [E2], make a bar graph showing numerical data [E4], and read a graph or table to find information [E7]. Question 13 asks students to tell the story of the graph and provides an opportunity to assess whether students can translate between the graph and the real world situation it describes [E8].

The Lesson 6 Workshop provides targeted practice with reading graphs and tables. See Figure 5 for sample feedback.

Student Guide: 12
Answers
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SG_Mini
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Student Activity Book:
Master:
One Teacher's Sample Feedback Box for Check-In: Questions 11–14
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