Hello colleagues, How do approach teaching graphs in your classroom? Have you engaged learners in creating graphs? Do you have a go-to online resource for graphic information?
Math teacher Kelly Turner creates a downloadable handout with interesting graphs on a related topic and adds it to her Graph of the Week website each week. This week's handout focuses on statistics about sports injuries. Last week the topic was about the music industry and who gets paid what. What percentage of the revenue generated from music recordings do you think go to the musicians compared to the record label and the distributors? How much do the musicians in a band make compared to the band's manager?
The graph of the week handout includes questions about the specific graphs for students to respond to as well as general questions about the graphs. Students are expected to write in response to the questions.
Here are the general questions teachers can pose about graphs:
- Is there an upward or downward trend?
- Are there any sudden spikes in the graph?
- What is being compared in the graph?
- What prediction can I make for the future?
- What inferences can I make about the graph?
Turner has archived the graphs of the week on the site, so it would be worth exploring the range of topics for which she has created handouts.
Please share your impressions of Turner's graphs of the week and tell how you might use these handouts in your teaching.
Cheers, Susan Finn Miller
Moderator, College & Career Standards
Comments
I like Kelly's questions and have used similar questions to get thinking going with graph analysis. I print off a dozen graphs of different stocks over the same time period and I remove the names of the companies. Using only these printed out line graphs (usually are line but sometimes throw in double stacked bar, pie, simple bar and scatter plot) I ask teams of students (in 3s) to place the companies in order of which ones they would invest 10 thousand dollars in it. They must supply a rational as if I was an investor wishing to give their team my money. I use questions like Kelley's to get the mental juices flowing. The real fun comes in when I go to a wonderful online simulation called Wallstreet Survivor. This free simulation includes all aspects of stock trading and even gives you 100k dollars of fake money to invest in real stock prices (offset 15 minutes from real values). I can take the suggestions of each group and plug in the money and let it sit for a week, a month or even longer to see how well their prediction was. Sometimes teams celebrate early luck only to have other teams pull ahead in later days. We even start graphing the values of each to have an ongoing graph that gets us comparing trends. Although the idea of stocks does not appeal to everyone, money usually does. This is not presented in a "Let us learn about stocks" format. The focus is on investing someone else's money in a way that will directly affect you positively or negatively based on the results because your commission is based on the success of your graph advice.
In terms of a non tech solution, the Empower Math series has a number of very nice exercises that are awesome for introducing the concept of graphing before diving into procedural creating of graphs. The activity that really has a big bang with students is the simple question of how we might construct a pie graph that exactly represents each slice of the pie in proportion to its value. The kicker is that the only tools we need are graph paper, scissors and something to write with, and .. spoiler alert ....we make a bar graph first. Students are amazed to see how bar graphs and circular graphs are related to each other. With tomorrow being PI day, it may be a very appropriate activity to try. If you have not seen or heard about this activity let us know. I am sure others or myself can provide some details.
I don't endorse curriculum at all normally, but the Empower math series has very much impressed me as the best way to get adult learners really understanding concepts well before introducing those pesky procedures the students have often already failed at in their past experiences. I hope the company that produces the series continues on up into the higher maths in high school and beyond because their elementary through middle school stuff is spot on and really supports math teachers and learners better than anything I have looked at.
What activities or resources do others use for graphing? Have others had as positive a reaction to the Empower or some other curriculum content? How about stock investing sims, do people have favorites they like to use for stock simulations with learners?
Hi Ed, Thanks for sharing how you are working with graphs in your class. The stocks activity and the online game sound not only fun but a great way to help students to understand graphs as well as how stocks work.
I've found that even low level learners benefit from creating their own graphs. When learners create graphs, this definitely helps them understand how to communicate graphic information and why graphs are useful. For instance, I have often had students survey each other, or survey people outside of the class to gather data. They then work with a partner or a small group to create a graph of the data collected and present their graph to the class.
For example, in a low level English class, learners surveyed each other about gardening. Pairs were assigned one question: Do you have a garden? Did you have a garden in your country? Do you like to grow vegetables? Do you like to grow flowers? After surveying each classmate, the pairs created a graph and then presented their data to the class.
In an advanced class, after completing the O*Net Interest Profiler, students surveyed each other about their work personalities and what careers were most interesting to them. After creating graphs, they presented their findings to the class.
It would be great to hear more ideas for how teachers are having students engage with graphic information. Sharing more online resources would also be helpful.
Cheers, Susan Finn Miller
Moderator, College & Career Standards
Ed, Susan, and Friends,
I like these examples. Teaching students to work with data sets is essential in both the adult education classroom and in college.Typically, I add one more layer to working with data sets. I ask students to write a brief paragraph describing the information they have collected. Connecting working with data, using meaningful technology, and communicating the information in both text and visual creates an integrated and meaningful lesson. (Then, you could add some history or reading by reading articles about Wall Street - or gardening, as in the examples).
Kathy