This week in Math for Elementary Teachers 2 we worked with e-manipulatives that focused on different ways of graphing things. We worked with graphs such as pie charts and bar charts. Working with graphs and interpreting them is something that people can always practice. Graphs pop up quite a bit in our day to day lives and it is always important to understand them.
One thing that is great about working with graphs in the elementary classroom is that the lesson behind it can easily be turned into something that is relevant to the lives of the students and can be spiced up to grab the attention of the students. One of the more common graphing activities that I have encountered has been using candy of kind to create a graph. Providing a handful of M&M’s and asking students to graph the number of red ones or green ones is something that I have seen many times. It can also be applied to students themselves and graph things such as height, color of hair, or anything physical about the students. Like I mentioned earlier understanding graphs are an important mathematical tool. Graphs are found everywhere in the math world as well as the real world. When students are watching the news or reading the latest Seventeen magazine, chances are there will be a graph of some kind.
One of the interesting things about graphs is that they can be used in all kinds of different educational settings and subjects. Obviously they would be found in a typical math class, but what about other subjects? I have seen graphs in science classes, history classes, language arts classes, family and consumer sciences classes, and many others. The fact that graphs are in all kinds of subjects makes it even more important to be able to read them and interpret them.
I came across a great website filled was various e-manipulatives that have to do with geometry. The website has categories of e-manipulatives from young students all the way through high school students.
No comments:
Post a Comment