September is a great time for data collection activities as students are naturally curious about their new classmates. Ask questions that require students to analyze data and support their conclusions.
Students visit a 2nd and a 4th grade class to measure the heights of older students using large building blocks as a non-standard unit of measure. They can also measure adults in the school community. Results are displayed in age-appropriate bar graphs (paper cut-outs of miniature building blocks glued on paper to form a bar graph) comparing the different age groups. The activities that comprise this lesson help students develop the concepts and vocabulary to describe, in a non-ambiguous way, how height changes as children get older. The introduction to graphing provides an important foundation for both creating and interpreting graphs in future years.
Students plant sunflower seeds in plastic cups, and once germinated, these are exposed to different conditions of light levels and/or soil moisture contents. During exposure of the plants to these different conditions, students measure growth of the seedlings every few days using non-standard measurement (inch cubes). After a few weeks, they compare the growth of plants exposed to the different conditions, and make pictorial bar graphs that demonstrate these comparisons.
These activities were designed to introduce or reinforce important math concepts and skills using seasonal themes. The games capitalize on students' fascination with spiders at Halloween time.
Students will play Sticks and Stones, a game based on the Apache game "Throw Sticks," which was played at multi-nation celebrations. Students will collect data, investigate the likelihood of various moves, and use basic ideas of expected value to determine the average number of turns needed to win a game.
Students conduct an experiment to determine whether or not the sense of smell is important to being able to recognize foods by taste. They do this by attempting to identify several different foods that have similar textures. For some of the attempts, the students hold their noses and close their eyes, while for others they only close their eyes. After they have conducted the experiment, they create a bar graph showing the number of correct and incorrect identifications for the two different experimental conditions tested.
