My Bar Graph Tells a Story: Teaching Children Mathematics

The article "My Bar Graph Tells a Story" detailed a five day lesson in which a class of diverse second graders explored the relationship between qualitative and quantitative bar graphs. For the first three days of the lesson the teacher guides the students through various activities introducing the relationship between qualitative and quantitative bar graphs. Students fill in pre-made blank graphs and measure them using unifix cubes in corresponding colors. During the final two days the culminating activity was for students to match common nursery rhymes and stories to qualitative bar graphs.

I thought that this article was extremely detailed and specific in the manner in which they presented the idea of the lesson. The authors seemed to ramble on with the specifics, which I find not to be very useful to teachers. I think that most teachers would adopt the basic idea of this lesson, but then alter it to fit the needs of their students. The general idea, objectives, and methods of the lesson are of a high quality. This lesson would definitely help students to strengthen their ability to communicate using mathematical language, and to interpret graphs with and without labels.