Posts Tagged ‘spreadsheets’

Spreadsheets with Lower School

Our second and third graders have been taking surveys and using the data to practice working in an Excel spreadsheet. The students took two surveys: one on favorite fruits and the other on favorite pizza toppings. I used Survey Monkey for the polling.

Both grades started with a template to create a bar graph using data collected from the “Favorite Fruits” survey. The students learned about cells and how to enter data. The students were fascinated to learn abut auto sum! Before showing auto sum, I asked the students to estimate what they thought the answer would be. Many were thrilled to discover that their estimation was fairly close. A favorite part of the lesson was learning how to change the color of the bars!

The following week, we discussed pie charts as well as bar graphs using the “Favorite Pizza Toppings” survey. Although we again had a template, I left out some information.

As soon as the students opened the spreadsheet, I heard comments such as: “You left off some of the toppings. We’ll have to write them.”

Hooray! I love it when they are observant!

Again, I had the students use the auto sum function and was pleased to discover that they remembered how to do it. The third graders even learned how to select the data and create a pie chart.

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As an added piece to the lesson, some of the third graders had time to blog about what they learned about spreadsheets.

Although we learned some basics, the students were thrilled to discover that they could use a program just like their parents (Well, not quite, but they were excited!). It’s a start . . .

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Graphing with First Graders

Have you ever tried to do too much in a class period and by the time class is over, you are completely worn out? That’s what happened with our first group of 1st graders. I introduced spreadsheets by having the students view a BrainPop, Jr. video on Pictographs. This is a fun introduction to picture graphs and the students always like to hear what Mobi and Annie have to say.

I thought we would have time to make two graphs so we created a tally chart on our favorite colors and our birthday months. To introduce spreadsheets for this age, we use MaxCount from Scholastic Keys; a child-friendly version of Microsoft Excel. MaxCount has several built-in activities and we started with “Counting Colors.” This is an excellent way to input data and watch the pictograph grow. In addition, the students are provided a text box where they can write their observations about the graph. Everyone printed and we moved onto “Counting Months” – similar to the previous activity but this time a bar graph is created.

The students did fabulously well considering I tried to fit too much into 40 minutes. What helped is that we had some wonderful visitors from TCU who were a huge help! It’s really nice to have extra hands in the lab.

After the 1st class left, I felt like we’d been through a whirlwind! For the next class, we omitted the “Counting Months” activity and we moved at a much more relaxed pace.

Here’s a sample graph:

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