Looking at Graphics

Today we started to talk a little about the upcoming Winter Olympics.  The newest Time for Kids has some great articles.  We did not have time to look at the whole magazine so we started by looking at a bar graph.  The bar graph showed the five most expensive olympics.  I was surprised to learn that Sochi was at the top of the list almost spending 50 billion dollars.

The class analyzed the chart and I simply asked them to tell me something that they noticed.  In an instant they all seemed to notice that the spending was increasing as the games became more modern.  This was simple to see, but then I asked the students to come up with reasons why the cost of Olympics was on the rise.  The answers blew me away:  newer technology might be used which would be more expensive, cameras are now HD cameras and might cost more, the countries might be having to make the events safer which would cost more money, more people might be coming to the games which would mean bigger venues which would cost more money, and the answer that amazed me security is being increased at Sochi which might be the reason for the high cost.

Then in Social Studies we continued to talk about federalism.  The class looked at this triple Venn Diagram.

I realize that might be small but this is a great visual text that shows how powers are divided between the different levels of our government.  Again I was amazed to see how quickly the class was able to comprehend this complex text.  

I love how we continue to look at these types of texts but also can still spend time reading more traditional texts in our class.  I know when I was younger when I did my at home reading it was always straight out of a book, but do not forget other types of texts.  If you find a great graph or pie chart in the newspaper, you might read that one night for your nightly reading.  I know I keep finding more and more of these examples of texts in all kinds of publications.  

I hope you are all having a great start to your week.