Transform Your K-5 Math Class by Amanda Thomas

Author:Amanda Thomas [Thomas, Amanda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: International Society for Technology in Education
Published: 2019-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

CASE 5.1

Ms. Dylan’s Grade 5 Class: Line Plots and Measurement Data

OBJECTIVES

• Create line plots for data measured in fractional units.

• Solve problems using data in line plots.

Ms. Dylan is teaching a lesson about creating and using line plots for data that is measured in fractions. Students should have learned about line plots in fourth grade, but she wants to review in case some students do not understand or remember. Her goals are for students to access a data set online to make a line plot and then answer questions about it. She wants to use real-world data, and because there has been some extreme weather in her area recently, she decides to use annual precipitation data she finds online. The data is measured in decimals, but because her class learned about fractions, decimals, and rounding earlier this year, she decides they should be able to round the decimal amounts to the nearest fourth of an inch.

Fifth graders in Ms. Dylan’s school switch classes for math, and she has the so-called “middle” group of students who tend to score “proficient” on their state math assessments. As her math group enters the classroom, she displays a warm-up word problem on the whiteboard (today’s is a logic puzzle about buckets of water) for students to solve as she collects homework from the night before. Once this routine is complete, she begins the day’s lesson by displaying and saying the lesson objectives, and asks students if they remember what line plots look like. Most students nod affirmatively, so Ms. Dylan proceeds with subsequent slides that show how line plots are set up and labelled.

Ms. Dylan makes sure to read the slides aloud, sometimes inviting students to read them, and she always adds some additional explanation to help students understand what she wants them to know. As she explains each part of the line plot (units, labels, title, Xs to plot data points) she demonstrates how to create a line plot using a table of rainfall totals she found online (with the line projected on the whiteboard, she is able to draw Xs for data points). Because the data is shown in decimals, and the line graph is labelled in fractional inches, she says they will round rainfall measurements to the nearest fourth inch. She frequently calls on students who raise their hands to say the corresponding fraction for each decimal amount. Some students struggle to round numbers like 2.7 to the nearest fourth inch. Instead of rounding to 2 3/4, they round up to three. She reminds the class that one-quarter = 0.25, and three-quarters = 0.75.

After using the slides to explain and demonstrate how to create a line plot, Ms. Dylan wants the class to make one together. This time she hands out a worksheet with data about local annual snowfall from the last nine years and projects the Number Line app from Math Learning Center (apps.mathlearningcenter.org/number-line) on the board, which displays a basic number line with whole numbers. She adjusts the labels to the nearest fourth inch and scrolls until the numbers show the range that fits the data.

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