After reading Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes, we created this bar graph as a class. If you have never read the story, it is the perfect text for the first week of school. It is about a girl (mouse) named Chrysanthemum who loves loves LOVES school but begins to dread it when other kids make fun of her name. You can do a lot of things with this book - do a lesson on anti-bullying, talk about name meanings, or create a bar graph like this! For the activity I chose to go with, I had the kids write their names on a post-it, then count the number of letters in their names. Then one by one they came up to the bar graph and placed their post-it above the right number of letters for their names. Another extension activity I could have done was to create a key for the colored post-its. Each table had one color post-it for this very reason, but I didn't get to it - oops! Again, you can informally assess your kids during this activity - can they write their names? Do they use uppercase for the first letter and lowercase for all the other letters? Is their handwriting legible? Can they count accurately? Can they follow directions? Can they follow along on the bar graph? Etc Etc. I feel like as teachers we are always assessing them, whether we know it or not - how much do they already know and where do I want to take them next? Then you can figure out the next steps for instruction.
