Correction and Winter Surveys (with a freebie)

First, a quick correction... earlier this week I posted a Medial Sound Mittens freebie. It just dawned on me today, at recess, that I forgot to credit

KMP Doodles 

for the mitten clip art I used.  I have since corrected the cover page and uploaded a new one to Google Docs.  I'm used to creating things for my classroom, not necessary to post, so I am not in the habit of adding clip art credits.  I don't know why I didn't think of it before!  I have contacted Kirsten to apologize, and hope that no one else was offended by my oversight.  There...now that I have that off my chest... on to some surveys.


Every year my students love doing surveys and this year is no exception. I always start out with a simple survey with only 2 options. Our first survey was "Did you stay up until midnight on NewYear's?"  We do it several times as a whole group with students choosing 6 friends to survey and then they graph their results. After we have done it a few times in whole group then it goes into my math work stations.  There are 6 slots on the survey because my groups are never larger than 6 students.

Surveyed 6, recorded 6 responses, but graphed 7 total responses

6 friends surveyed, but 7 responses are recorded and graphed

Surveyed 6 friends, but forgot to record an answer - graph correctly reflects data collected

As the year progresses we add more choices, and they survey the entire class. This gets really exciting because then we can begin to make extrapolations based on our data. In the spring we always take a field trip to the zoo. After learning about many different animals, students complete a class survey with 5 different animals to choose from. It was amazing to watch them analyze their graphs. They would make statements like: "My data shows me that our class likes animals with four legs more than they like animals with less than four legs" or "Our class likes animals that are mammals the most." Gotta love those higher order thinking skills in action!


Anyway, at this point in the year we are working on simple surveys and graphs in work stations.  Here are the surveys that we will be using as we study all things snowy and wintery. (clip art courtesy of Microsoft)