Growing! Growing! Bar Graph

Growing! Growing! Bar Graph lesson plan

Calling all scientists! Record your findings with a colorful bar graph. Illustrate two sets of data or variables with amazing Crayola® Color Switchers™ technology.

  • 1.

    Bar graphs are a great way to visually represent growth or change. The basic parts of a bar graph are a section that shows measurement (height or weight for example) and a section that shows the passage of time or some similar factor. For instance, if you wanted to make a bar graph that showed how much you grew in the last year, you might plot your height in inches or centimeters (measurement) against months (time).

  • 2.

    What information would you like to show on a chart? Maybe you’d like to see how much your class hamster eats each day of the week. You first need to gather information. Let’s imagine that you feed your hamster in teaspoons, which is your measurement.

  • 3.

    Use Crayola Color Switchers Markers to draw a grid on paper. You need one column for each day, plus an extra column for your measurements. For one week, then, you need eight columns.

  • 4.

    What is a reasonable measurement of the amount of food your hamster might eat? If it ranges between one and five teaspoons, you need five rows for the food, plus a sixth row to write the days of the week. All together, you need eight columns (vertical), and six rows (horizontal). Use a straight edge to draw these lines on your paper.

  • 5.

    In each section on the left-hand column, list the number of possible teaspoons of food (measurement), with the least possible amount at the bottom of the column. Leave the top space open.

  • 6.

    On the top row, skip the first space, then write the days of the week, one in each space.

  • 7.

    Use your Color Switchers Markers to color each day’s column. Use a different color for each day.

  • 8.

    Now you’re ready to fill in your graph. If your hamster eats one teaspoon of food on Monday, flip the marker and apply the special color switcher to put a dot at the one-teaspoon level in the Monday column. If she’s particularly hungry on Tuesday, and eat

  • 9.

    Use a Color Switchers Marker to connect the dots from day to day. You can easily see if your hamster ate more, less, or the same amount all week.

  • 10.

    What else could you graph? If you are trying to improve your grades in a subject at school, you could graph each test grade against the number of the test, to see if you are improving. If you are growing tomatoes for a science fair project, you could meas

Benefits

  • Children recognize the relationship between time and change.
  • Students choose a situation in which they can use a bar graph to show data.
  • Children gather valid data, and then create a bar graph to record their findings.
  • Children analyze their findings to identify patterns of change.

Adaptations

  • Make several bar graphs drawn with different measurements and different rates of time. Record the same information on each graph. Analyze the resulting lines. What can you learn from this?
  • Graph something that a friend or a family member is trying to accomplish. For instance, if your sister is trying to run faster, time her on a predetermined length of track each day, and then graph her progress. Use the graph to encourage your friend.