Plane Dealings

Objective:
Child will be able to graph points on a coordinate plane based on the data they collect.

Essential Question(s):
How can graphs help us see change using two different measurements?

Special Materials:
Pencil and paper

Bricks Required:
16×16 plate, 1×1 bricks, 1xn plates

Project Structure

Engage/Explain:

1. Begin by asking child about the weather today.
   1. Is it warm or cool? Has there been any rain? What about yesterday and the day before? Do they know what it’s supposed to be like tomorrow or later this week?
2. Ask child if the weather has been moving in a certain direction: Has it been getting progressively warmer or cooler, or has it been different every day?
   1. Explain that it can be helpful to visually represent data to see the changes in relation to each other.
   2. Sketch a first quadrant on the board, then ask child to look up the weather and plot the temperatures with date as the x-axis and temperature as the y-axis.

Explore/Elaborate:

1. Ask child what else could be measured this way.
2. Child gathers their data, then creates a first-quadrant graph and plots their data using 1×1 bricks. Child should be sure to label their axes and the chart.
3. Have child share what they have plotted and if they can make any inferences from this data.