Lesson Plan
Understanding Line Plots
This lesson provides students with the opportunity to critically think about data. Use this lesson alongside Line Plots: Representing the Length of Classroom Items or as a stand alone lesson.
This lesson can be used as a pre-lesson for the Line Plots: Representing the Length of Classroom Items lesson plan.
Grade:
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View aligned standards
This lesson can be used as a pre-lesson for the Line Plots: Representing the Length of Classroom Items lesson plan.
Objectives
Academic
Students will be able to use a line plot to represent data.
Language
Students will be able to describe the characteristics of a line plot with grade-level academic vocabulary and represent data using line plots and sentence frames.
Introduction
(4 minutes)- Gather students so they are sitting near the whiteboad. Project the Comparing Sets of Data worksheet on the whiteboard. Say, "Can anyone tell me what these are?" Have students turn and talk first with an elbow partner and then allow a few students to share out their ideas with the rest of the group. Ideas may include graphs, pictures, types of sports, etc.
- Ask students if the graphs are the same or different. Have students turn and talk to a partner and then ask a few students to share out their ideas with the rest of the class. Encourage students to explain their thinking by offering prompting questions, such as:
- Why do you think the graphs are the same?
- Why do you think the graphs are different?
- Encourage students to come up to the whiteboard to show similarities and differences between the graphs. Provide sentence stems and frames for students who need extra support during the discussion.
- Clarify that each graph represents, or shows, a set of data. Point to the graph on the right and say, "Can anyone tell me what type of graph is here on the right?" Allow a student to share their idea and elaborate that the graph is a bar graph. If the student was able to label the graph accurately, ask the student to explain how they knew the graph was a bar graph. Point to the graph on the left and say, "This is a line plot. We are going to learn about line plots today and how to represent data using a line plot."