Bar Graph Activity

The students will be looking at a bar graph and answer questions about it. (SMP1 and 6)

• How many data points are in the graph?
• Can you tell the mode?
• Is there a range of data values?
• When is a bar graph a good way to display data

Begin by asking students to write down their full names (first and last).  Once their names are written down, have them count the number of letters in their name.  Collect the data on the board based upon the amount of letters in the name.  Once the data is on the board, have the students create a bar graph based upon the information collected.  At this time, the teacher will move about the classroom making sure students are correctly representing the data.  Key parts to look for:  title, labeled x and y axis, scale is equal and starts at zero, correct bar heights, bars not connected.  When students are done creating the first graph, have them change the format of the graph (vertically or horizontally) based on their first graph.  As the students finish their bar graphs, use the bar graph worksheet to answer questions about the data.   If you have a student that finish ahead of the others, they can use the bar grapher tool to represent this data on the computer.  It will be a good visual check for the students to see that they have done it correctly.  If no computer is available, the students can check with other classmates because everyone is working with the same data values. (MP 2, 3, 6)

To wrap up this lesson, have students work on the Cereal worksheet (Navigating through Data Analysis) to collect as evidence of student learning.  This worksheet drives home the main concepts of 6.SP.3.  Data sets can contain many numerical values that can be summarized by one number, while displaying the data in a graph (6.SP.4)