4th Grade Graphing Virginia Resources
Fourth graders at Laburnum Elementary have been learning about graphing in Math (SOL4.14) and Virginia natural resources in Science (SOL4.9), so today students in Ms. Waltz’s class researched and graphed Virginia products. First I shared two websites for research: Virginia Farm Products & Virginia Minerals. These sites provide the amount in dollars or tons for each resource. We discussed why the units were different (it wouldn’t make sense to compare farm products in tons because of their different sizes: cows weigh a lot more than chickens). Next we opened a Google spreadsheet and wrote “Product” in Column A and “Amount in (tons or dollars)” in Column B. They had to choose the unit that corresponded with their products. Then they typed three products of their choice in Column A and entered the amount of each in Column B. Now that they had entered their data, it was time to graph it. Google Sheets has a new “Explore” feature that can be accessed by clicking the star shaped icon in the bottom right corner. They chose a color scheme from the pop up menu and added the graph to their spreadsheet. I also showed them how to change the color of the bars (click on a bar and choose a color from the side menu). Finally we shared our spreadsheets on Schoology so we could learn from each other. Click here to see all their graphs (UPDATE: I did the same lesson with Ms. Dowling’s class on 9/27, so those have been added as well).