Description
What our Line Plots lesson plan includes
Lesson Objectives and Overview: Line Plots teaches students how to organize data into line plots. They will also learn how to analyze and answer questions about line plots. And by the end of the lesson, they’ll know when to use a line plot instead of other graphic information organizers. This lesson is for students in 4th grade.
Classroom Procedure
Every lesson plan provides you with a classroom procedure page that outlines a step-by-step guide to follow. You do not have to follow the guide exactly. The guide helps you organize the lesson and details when to hand out worksheets. It also lists information in the blue box that you might find useful. You will find the lesson objectives, state standards, and number of class sessions the lesson should take to complete in this area. In addition, it describes the supplies you will need as well as what and how you need to prepare beforehand. The supplies you will need for this lesson include pencils, pens, highlighters, and clear snack sandwich bags.
Options for Lesson
Included with this lesson is an “Options for Lesson” section that lists a number of suggestions for activities to add to the lesson or substitutions for the ones already in the lesson. If you have more advanced students, you can extend the lesson with line plots using fractions or line plots where each symbol represents more than one. You can encourage your students to express individual interests when they develop their research questions based on what they want to know (for example, number of pets kids have, number of hours kids have for daily screen time, etc.). Another teaching suggestion is to pair the lesson with an ELA lesson about research and presentation skills. Finally, you can always check the Learn Bright site for other lessons for pairing multi-curricular activities.
Teacher Notes
The teacher notes page includes a paragraph with additional guidelines and things to think about as you begin to plan your lesson. This page also includes lines that you can use to add your own notes as you’re preparing for this lesson.
LINE PLOTS LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES
Line Graph or Line Plot
The Line Plots lesson plan includes two content pages. There are graphs all around us! You might see a graph on TV, in a magazine, in your textbooks, or on your computer. Why do we use so many graphs?
Almost everyone finds visual information relatively easy to understand. Charts and data are a way to present large amounts of data in an easy-to-understand format. However, not all graphs and charts are good at showing all types of information.
When creating a graph, you should consider what kind of chart will best display the information you want people to have. For example, line graphs are good for showing changes over time, also called trend data. If you wanted to show how income has changed in the US over 40 years, a line graph is a good way to display that information. Trying to show the same data on a bar graph wouldn’t work, because it would be very hard to interpret.
Line graphs and line plots have similar names but are actually different kinds of charts! They display data differently. Line plots kind of look like number lines. While line graphs are good for showing data over time, line plots are good for showing the frequency of different responses. For example, the lesson shows a line plot for students’ favorite ice cream flavors. Out of 14 students, 5 said chocolate. Therefore, the line plots shows 5 X’s over the word “Chocolate.” Once the other flavors are also tallied, it’s very easy to look at the line plot to see which flavor was the most popular and which was the least.
If you have a larger amount of data but still want to use a line plot, you can have each of your tallies (X’s, for example) represent a larger number of responses. For example, instead of having each X represent one data point, it could represent 5. Therefore, if we saw 5 X’s above “Chocolate,” we’d know that 25 people said chocolate was their favorite flavor of ice cream. We can still use the line plot to easily determine the most and least popular flavors quickly! Just make sure to always include a key.
LINE PLOTS LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS
The Line Plots lesson plan includes three worksheets: an activity worksheet, a practice worksheet, and a homework assignment. You can refer to the guide on the classroom procedure page to determine when to hand out each worksheet.
EDIBLE LINE PLOT ACTIVITY WORKSHEET
For the activity worksheet, students will create an edible line plot using either Skittles or M&Ms. First, they will separate their candy. by color. Next, they write down how many pieces of candy they have in each color. Finally, they will use the included line plot template to create a line plot using their candy as their Xs and making sure to label the color and include a key.
COLLECTING DATA PRACTICE WORKSHEET
The practice worksheet asks students to first create a question that they will use to collect data. Next, they will collect and tally their data using the chart on the worksheet. Finally, they will use their data to create a line plot.
LINE PLOTS HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT
For the homework assignment, students will use the heights listed on the worksheet to create a line plot. They will then answer questions about the data and their line plot.
Worksheet Answer Keys
This lesson plan includes answer keys for the practice worksheet and the homework assignment. If you choose to administer the lesson pages to your students via PDF, you will need to save a new file that omits these pages. Otherwise, you can simply print out the applicable pages and keep these as reference for yourself when grading assignments.
