Graphing Picture and Bar Graphs

Writing and Teaching your LE

This lesson was based on student needs and was an extension of the data collection that had begun in the Investigations in Numbers, Data, and Space Textbook. I designed the lesson to focus on picture graphs and bar graphs. The NYS standards for second grade expect them to learn and be able to draw a picture graph and a bar graph to represent a data set and to also solve simple put-together, take-apart, and compare problems using information presented in a bar graph. Since the students enjoyed collecting the pocket data, I wanted to show them what data can be used for and other ways to represent it. Graphs are very important to businesses, home life, goal setting, teachers, etc. A graph is a visual way to display and interpret any data collected. Students need to learn graphing basics so in the future they can grow and expand upon the concepts in math and science classes.

This lesson was designed to utilize the Smartboard. The students did not have a Smartboard in class so I wanted to introduce them to the technology. I began my lesson with a PowerPoint presentation, “Graphs,” geared to activate students’ schema and build upon the steps of creating a graph. During the lesson, students actively participated and worked with each other as a whole group and in small groups to contribute to the PowerPoint. The Smartboard allowed students the visual and manipulative ability to work with the graph. Students added picture drawings to the picture graph slide and filled in the bars of the bar graph. When the students worked independently, few needed the expectations and instructions reiterated. I gave the students specific directions to count their cubes, draw them in the picture graph, and answer the questions below. Once I had checked each student’s completed work, they received a fun-sized bag of M&Ms to complete the bar graph. Students enjoyed this lesson for many reasons, the Smartboard was fun and engaging, they were interested and invested in the data collected, and they were motivated by receiving candy when their work was completed correctly. Many of the students said, “This was so much fun, can we do more math like this.”

The lesson objectives were met but the reliability of my assessments was compromised. Students collected data, counted and sorted, and created picture and bar graph successfully. Some of the struggling students received help from peers at their table. The lesson tasks were congruent to the lesson objectives and allowed students to build and grow in their graphing abilities. The lack of a pre-assessment threatens the validity of the formative and summative assessments. When you compare the formative assessment and summative assessment, the two do not precisely line up. The formative assessment has a separate picture and bar graph but the summative assessment is just a bar graph with picture support. Since the picture graph was a more challenging concept for some students to grasp I realized an equally challenging summative assessment to the formative assessment must be given.

After writing and reevaluating my learning experience I changed the pre-and post-assessments of my lesson. At www.superteacherworksheets.com,I found the Farm Animal Picture Graph and Bar Graph of Pets. These two worksheets clearly assessed reading data and answering quantity and more/less questions from a picture and bar graph. I also created two summative assessments from the same template as the formative assessment; collecting button and skittle data and creating the respective picture and bar graph. The pre-assessment worksheets are comparable to the formative and summative teacher created worksheets because they analyze the data by quantifying and comparing it. Since the formative and the summative assessments measure the same student abilities, they would produce stronger data results and elevate the validity of the lesson.

Peer Reviewing your LE

The challenge of creating a learning experience comes from many factors but not knowing if the new ideas will benefit the future lesson is by far the most difficult part. I created the “Graphing Picture and Bar Graphs” lesson for Daemen College’s EDU 327 class: Teaching to the Standards. Professor Arnold helped section the project by scaffolding each step we would need to take in creating a Learning Experience to be peer reviewed. The experience of actually reviewing someone else’s work gave me the confidence to create my own learning experience. I was able to see the parts and focus points of the lesson. The peer review process was initially difficult to follow because the protocol left awkward silent time for people to just ask questions but wait for the response in the next section. I enjoyed the open conversation time because it opened the floor for natural conversation. On October 25th 2012, my peer group, the “Whatevers,” and I met in Dun Scotus room 222 for the presentation of my learning experience. The focus question was “Is there a child friendly rubric or checklist that could have been used?” My peers were supportive and encouraging during the presentation of my learning experience. All the comments shared helped make my learning experience stronger and their ideas would benefit future students during the lesson. One reviewer added, “I like that you used the smart board, it’s a great tool to use for math. The kids probably loved this hands-on approach.” This statement happens to be true; the students were very engaged in the math lesson because of the kinesthetic/visual approach of the Smartboard.

Posting online

When it came to posting my LE online, I was very excited. I had used Adobe Dreamweaver in the past and did not remember it being too difficult. As soon as I opened the template I knew putting this web page together would be a breeze. I began by preparing my images and documents to be placed in the template folders. Once I had everything ready to go, it was as simple as Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V (copy and paste)! John Zaepfel was a great resource, he quickly showed me how to hyperlink my documents and add anchors to my page for Back to Top links. He also gave me great insight into personalizing my page's color scheme and layout.

Overall, I think posting the LE online will not only add my work to the legendary Daemen TLQP page but also help others in writing their own learning experience. The entire cycle of creating, teaching, reviewing, and publishing my work has truly helped me appreciate the teaching community and value the opinions and ideas of my peers.