This page is an overview and menu page for all the information you need to do these Grade 4 activities.
About the Activities
In the activities Making Graphs of Changing Populations, Discussing the Shapes of the Graphs, and Matching Graphs to Activities students do the following: groups of students make line graphs that show how population changes throughout a day in different (unnamed) places or activities; as a whole class they match each other's line graphs to a list of places and activities; and the groups of students revise their graphs to clarify anything that was confusing. Their work focuses on:
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making and interpreting different graphical shapes
To do these activities, you, the teacher, will need:
(These files are provided in Portable Document Format (PDF) and can be read using Adobe's free Acrobat Reader. If you don't have this application, you can download it at Adobe's web site.)
Your students will need:
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Paper 11" by 17" or larger, 2 per group
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Light and dark pens, 1 each per group
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Student Sheet 16, Mystery Places and Activities PDF, 1 per student, plus one cut up
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Posted copy of list on Student Sheet 9
About the Unit
Changes Over Time is the fourth grade unit on graphs in the Investigations curriculum. Four critical parts of understanding graphs are emphasized in this unit: (1) understanding how changes and total are related (2) understanding the difference between continuous and discrete changes (3) describing data; and (4) getting an overall sense of change from a graph.
"The value for kids in being taught this way... is that it builds a confidence in thinking about math that's not relying on rote memory or procedures that you can forget at times but that really builds towards an understanding of math, and the number system or ways of collecting data or looking at the physical world." -- Grade 4 Teacher
"For me as a teacher I feel that every moment is caught up with math and very little with class management issues. Most of the time we are doing math for an hour a day. There is much more to do because I'm following kids' thinking." -- Grade 4 Teacher
"As you get used to more than one way of getting an answer you begin incorporating that in your own mindset, that becomes part of your thinking. 'I did it this way, maybe there's another way.' It trains you in your thinking--it works for children and teachers that way." -- Grade 4 Teacher
"Dialogue boxes--I love them. I use the words. It helps me because sometimes when there is a silence I want to jump in. Another teacher will say to me, 'I didn't know what to ask. Where did you get that question?' I'll say, 'The dialogue box.'" -- Grade 3 Teacher
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