With this information, they are better able to interpret the graph but what if they are given a graph like the one to the left and asked to create a "story" about it. This graph has none of the things we tell students to look for so they often flounder due to the missing information. I've given students graphs with no information and asked them to create a story to go with it and they struggled so I had to break the process down into smaller parts.
I had to use questions like:
1. Is the graph going up or down? What does it mean if the graph is going up (increasing) or going down (decreasing).
2. What types of things either increase or decrease?
3. Why would it change from increasing to decreasing or vice versa?
4. What does it mean if you end up with a straight line parallel to the x-axis?
Did you know that when students are asked to create a story or narrative to go with the graph, it helps improve their understanding? If you look back at the graph I posted at the top, there are so many possible stories.
1. Each tick on the y-axis represents $10 while each tick on the x-axis represents a week. So the first week, John deposits 8 dollars, the second week he puts in $4.00 so now he has a total of $12 but on the third week, he had to take out $3.00 to go to the movies but then he added $11.00 to make up for what he'd taken out........
2. Different scenario, is that Jose is out driving, he is accelerating for the first two minutes, then he has to slow down between the second and third minutes when traffic cleared up and he was able to continue increasing his speed until he reached his cruising speed.
Lots of possibilities but if you aren't sure how to teach a section on interpreting graphs so students are able to practice, check out this site. This pdf is from open university in India has some very nice activities with the necessary resources to complete it. The first activity has students bringing in examples of graphs from newspapers, magazines, etc but if you are somewhere students do not have access to this type of media, you can search the internet and print some out.
Divide the students into groups and have them look at all the graphs they came up with or you provided. they want to look at the graphs and divide them into the easy group which are graphs that are easy to understand without much thought, or the hard ones that you need to really examine to figure out.
Students will take the hard ones and write down what it is about the graphs that make them difficult to understand. Next they will look at the easy ones and write down what it is about these graphs that make them easy to understand. The final step in this activity is to compare the two lists to see what is the same in each and what is different basically a compare and contrast.
The second activity has students working in groups of two or three people. Each group is given a bunch of cards that they match the story with the graph. They want to make sure the story they read matches the picture of the graph and they identify the characters or variables in the story. The second part of this activity has them looking at the examples from activity one to identify the variables the graphs are telling the story about. The final step is to have the groups create their own cards with story and graphs that they give to another group to match up.
The third activity is again matching graphs with stories but they are based on distance and time. After they match and decide if the graphs tell the story, they make their own sets of cards to tell more stories. The fourth activity has students interpreting the data on a auto rickshaw race where the vehicles are going around a bend. The final activity has students being the writers of a movie who are creating an escape scene using a description and graph.
I like this because it has students matching scenarios with graphs and they are given the chance to create their own for others. Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear. Have a great day.
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