Lesson 6

The purpose of this warm-up is to elicit the idea that each bar on the bar graph represents a category, which will be useful when students use survey data to create a bar graph in a later activity.

• Groups of 2
• Display the graph.
• “What do you notice? What do you wonder?”
• 1 minute: quiet think time

• “Discuss your thinking with your partner.”
• 1 minute: partner discussion
• Share and record responses.

• “This is a graph about students’ favorite science topic. What are some possible categories for the graph?” (living things, space, ecosystems, weather, energy)

The purpose of this activity is for students to decide on a question and answer choices that they will use to survey a group of students.

• Groups of 4
• “Think about some topics you could survey students in the class about.” (favorite sport, favorite food, favorite subject)
• 1 minute: quiet think time
• Share and record responses.

• “Work with your group to choose a topic and create your survey. It should include a question and up to 6 answer choices.”
• 5–7 minutes: group work time

• Invite each group to share their questions and answer choices.
• “Does anyone want to revise their answer choices after hearing ideas from other groups?”
• Give students time to revise their survey, if needed.

The purpose of this activity is for students to survey a large group of students. This data set will be used in the next lesson to make a scaled picture graph and a scaled bar graph. This process could take 2–3 days depending on how many students in your school are surveyed.

A blank table for recording survey results is included in the blackline master, but students can also use lined paper. Here is a partial image of the table for reference:

• A blackline master is provided to record students’ survey results, but they could also record their results using lined paper.

• Groups of 4
• “You will be asking your survey question to a lot of students. Let’s think about ways to prepare for it so that you could collect data smoothly.”
• “Discuss the questions in the activity with your group.”
• 3–5 minutes: group work time
• Share responses.
• Consider giving each group a copy of the table to record their survey results.
• Students may wish to create a display that shows their question and answer choices. Provide access to tools for creating a visual display, in case requested.

• 15 minutes: in-class survey time
• Give students additional time if surveying students in another class.

• See lesson synthesis.