Button, Button,Who Has the Button? MA.D.1.1.1.1.1; MA.E.1.1.1.1.1,.2,.3, and.4; MA.E.3.1.1.1.1,.2, and.3 LESSON FOCUS Classifying and sorting objects according to attributes. COMPANION ANCHORS LESSONS Sorting; Tallies; Pictographs MATERIALS Excursions student pages 5 6 Transparency TR1 Home Connection pages 7 8 Bags of approximately 20 assorted buttons Masking tape for floor graph frame: 2 rows by as many columns as the number, whichever is greater, of boys or girls in the class One cup per child Three boxes of small crackers with distinctive shapes, or three math manipulatives with different shapes (see Building Skills and Strategies) attribute classify different graph greatest key LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT LESSON OVERVIEW least pictograph picture graph same sort In this lesson, children will learn about attributes and begin to sort and classify objects according to different attributes. They will construct picture graphs using actual objects and pictures, and pictographs using symbols. They will discuss the benefits of one method over the others, and they will be introduced to the concept of a key. SETTING THE STAGE Discover attributes and find similarities/differences. Place the buttons in a pile in front of the class. They should be different colors, shapes, sizes, etc. Explain to the class that you have been keeping all the buttons in one big box, but you want to separate them into smaller boxes so you can find them more easily. Pick two buttons out of the pile. They should have at least one attribute in common, and differ in other ways. For example, the first button could be red and round with 2 holes and the second button could be red and square with 4 holes. Ask the class how the buttons are the same, and what the two buttons have in common. Write the similarities on the board. (Both buttons are red.) Ask the class how the buttons are different. Write the differences on the board. (first button: round, 2 holes; second button: square, 4 holes) Discuss ways to sort by attributes and begin to sort objects accordingly. Ask the class how many different ways you could sort all of your buttons. Prompt students to look at the attributes you wrote on the board. They may suggest sorting by color (red/blue), shape (round/square), or number of holes (2 holes/4 holes). Decide with the class which way to sort the buttons. Then take out another button, for example, a round, green button with 4 holes. Ask the class in which categories the new button fits. It could be categorized with round button and with buttons with 4 holes. FOCUS ON LANGUAGE Tell the class that they just used attributes to sort. Attributes describe something about an object. Explain that attributes, such as size, color, or shape, are a way to classify objects. Ask the class why they think putting like things together, sorting by an attribute, is useful. Prompt discussion about the ways different children might sort and why. Try to get answers such as, I would sort by color because that s what I need to know about my buttons. 6
TOPIC 1 Button, Button, Who Has the Button? BUILDING CONCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE Choose your own attribute. Separate the class into groups of four. Give each group a handful of buttons. Tell them to sort the buttons however they feel is best. Have each group explain how they chose to sort their buttons, and why they chose that method. Sort the class. Use the class as an analogy. Say, Just as we separated the buttons into smaller groups based on their attributes, we can sort the class by attributes. By what attributes could we sort the class? Prompt children to come up with examples, such as: boys and girls, hair color, eye color, wearing short sleeves or wearing long sleeves. Build a life-size graph. Choose one of the attributes suggested (e.g., boys and girls) and tell the class that you re going to show how many of each there are in the class. Label one row of the masking-tape floor graph frame Girls and the other row Boys. Have each child stand in one of the blocks in the appropriate row. Count how many there are of each category. Girls Boys Tell children they have just made a graph. Discuss what you should call the graph. With the children still on the graph, have them answer questions such as: Which row is longer? How much longer? Does the longer row have more students in it? How many more students? BUILDING SKILLS AND STRATEGIES Sort your food (manipulative). Distribute cups with different quantities of foods, such as seven triangular crackers, four fish-shaped crackers, and five square crackers in each. Do not include more than seven of any one type of cracker. Have children open their books to Show It!, page 5. Explain to children that they will carefully empty Name School District of Hillsborough County. Copying this page without written permission of Metropolitan Teaching and Learning Company is illegal. Button, Button, Who Has the Button? SHOW IT! TOPIC 1 Button, Button,Who Has the Button? Answers will vary. five 5 GRAPH IT! Key: 1 stands for 1 cracker. Answers will vary. 6 six TOPIC 1 Button, Button,Who Has the Button? Page 5 Page 6 7
TOPIC 1 Button, Button, Who Has the Button? the contents of their cup onto their desks when you give the signal. Then they will take the items and sort the contents into three categories. Build a concrete graph. Once they have sorted the items, have children place each item in a box on the graph in their books. All like items should be placed in the same row. Once children have finished, ask questions such as, Which item has the least number? Which has the greatest number? and so on. Ask, When you look at your graph, do you have to count to know which has the most and which has the least? Help children recognize the one-to-one correspondence of items on the graph, by asking why it is important to line things up so that they are directly below each other. PUTTING IT INTO ACTION Build a picture graph with pictures. Ask children if they can think of a way that they can eat or put away the items on the graph but still show the information on the graph (e.g., drawing a picture of each item, writing down the number of each item). Explain to children that today they are going to draw a picture of each item. On the board, chart paper, or a transparency, model how you would pick up each item, one at a time, and replace it with a picture. As children fill in the squares with pictures, they can place the items back in their cups. Have children continue working until all of their items are back in their cups. Introduce pictographs. Ask children, Wouldn t it be easier if instead of drawing a different picture for each, we could just use something like a circle or square to stand for each food? Use transparency Button, Button, Who Has the Button? TR1 to demonstrate how the pictures can be replaced with a symbol. Introduce the term pictograph. FOCUS ON LANGUAGE A pictograph is very much like a picture graph. However, it uses symbols instead of pictures to tell how many. Explain that in a pictograph, a symbol can stand for more of each item. A key at the bottom of a graph tells how many items a symbol stands for. Create a pictograph with labels and construct a key. Have children turn to Graph It!, page 6, in their Excursions books. Explain that they will use the information on their picture graphs to make pictographs. Ask, If there are symbols instead of pictures, how will anyone know what kind of cracker each row stands for? Allow children to come up with suggestions to solve this problem. If children need help, you may want to draw a fish cracker at the front of the row where symbols stand for a number of fish crackers. Children can check the number of fish crackers they drew against the symbols that come after the drawn fish cracker label. Continue to draw labels for the other two cracker types. Give children time to draw their labels. Finally, introduce the notion of a key. On this pictograph, 1 symbol stands for 1 cracker. Show the key on the transparency. Have children complete their pictographs. Title your pictograph. Discuss a title for the pictograph. Have children volunteer ideas for the title. Discuss how a title has to cover the whole topic, so for this graph, a title such as Fish Crackers would not work, since not all the crackers are shaped like fish. If children have difficulty, ask if a title like Our Crackers might work, and have children explain why this might be a good title. Interpret graphs and discuss their merits. Once finished, ask children the same questions you asked when the actual items were on the graph. Ask if the pictures and symbols show the same information that the actual items did. Discuss the merits of using symbols over pictures. Prompt children to realize that using symbols makes the graph easier to make as well as to read. HOME CONNECTION Have children take home and complete Home Connection, pages 7 8. 8
Name School District of Hillsborough County. Copying this page without written permission of Metropolitan Teaching and Learning Company is illegal. Button, Button,Who Has the Button? SHOW IT! TOPIC 1 Button, Button, Who Has the Button? five 5
GRAPH IT! Key: 1 stands for 1 cracker. 6 six TOPIC 1 Button, Button, Who Has the Button?
Name HOME CONNECTION: FAMILY SIZE Dear Parent or Guardian: Your child has been learning all about pictographs and how to make them. He or she has learned how to take information from a tally chart and show it on a pictograph. Talk with your child about the tally chart on the back of this sheet. Then he or she should create a pictograph to show the same information. Have you child share his or her pictograph with you when it is complete. School District of Hillsborough County. Copying this page without written permission of Metropolitan Teaching and Learning Company is illegal. TOPIC 1 Button, Button, Who Has the Button? seven 7
HOME CONNECTION: FAMILY SIZE Carlos made a tally chart of the number of people each child in his class has in his or her family. Family Size Number of People Number of Families 2 4 3 8 4 9 5 or more 3 5Show the information in the tally chart in a pictograph. 2 people 3 people 4 people 5 or more people Title 8 eight TOPIC 1 Button, Button, Who Has the Button?