At the beginning of the year, it’s good to review graphing and make your expectations clear on what you expect when students turn in a graph.
- Title?
- Clearly labeled X and Y axes?
- Proper scale?
- Key?
- Nearly drawn bars?
If you teach physical science, this is pretty critical.
Here is a round-up of graphing resources you can use with students:
1. Graphing Poster: A great way to reinforce your graphing expectations is to have them visible for students. This graphing checklist can be placed in student binders or hung on the wall for students to reference when they work on a graph.
2. Turner’s Graph of the Week: This stellar website has a weekly graphing worksheet that is sure to engage students. Graphing topics are timely, relevant, and engaging.
3. Graphing stories: This website has video clips students watch, analyze, and create a graph from. (Most are motion related, so this is a great site for physical science teachers).
4. Smart Graphs: This digital activity has students read through a scenario and decide which is the best type of graph to represent events in the story.
5. ACS: Here are a series of graphing activities from American Chemical Society.
6. Graphing Stations: This station activity has 8 stations students rotate through that all relate to graphing. Activities include identifying which type of graph to use, creating titles for graphs, watching a video clip, and arranging a jigsaw puzzle.
7. Graphing Analysis: Here is a freebie on TpT from Amy Brown Science.
8. What’s going on in this graph? In this series from the New York Times, students check out graphs that are published weekly. Ask your students- what do you notice? What do you wonder? What’s going on?
9. Create a Graph: Want students to practice creating their own graphs digitally? If you don’t think your students are ready to tackle Excel, try out this user friendly website.
10. How to Spot a Misleading Graph: This TEd-Ex video shows students how graphs can mislead viewers. It brings up great discussion points!
I hope you find those useful!
Rock on,
