Turkey Glyph

Objectives:

Students will represent, discuss, read, write, and listen to mathematics as a vital part of learning and using mathematics
Students will collect, organize, display data for given situations

Materials Needed:

Variety of construction paper for students
Poster of the legend for the project
Scissors
Glue

Introduction:

            The purpose for the turkey glyph activity is to give the students a visual tool for the likes and dislikes of their peers.  It helps them see that everyone has unique differences in tastes and in the way that each family celebrates Thanksgiving.  The turkey glyph is a fun activity that helps the students create and read graphs for future classes. It also helps them to easily make predictions and compare and contrast things

 

Teacher Procedure/Development:

Begin by reading the book, The First Thanksgiving to the whole class.
Students are shown the poster of the turkey glyph.
Discuss the following questions with the class:
                1. What is a glyph? (short for hieroglyphics, form of picture writing 

                     that conveys information)

            2.  What is a legend? (it explains each feature of the glyph)

 

Talk with students about the directions.
Have them interpret what my turkey says about me.
Have them go back to their seats
After they look and think about what colors they need, they can gather the materials they need to start creating their own glyph
When they are finished, we can meet back in the library and talk about what we did. Show some of the turkeys and see if the children can use the legend to describe what someone else made.
Create a bar graph showing just one aspect of the turkeys, such as which food was represented in the feathers.
Ask questions such as:

What can we tell by looking at the graph?
What food was the most favorite?
What food was the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th? - This question also helps the students recognize ordinal numbers.
How many people like corn? etc

Possible extensions:

Students read each others glyphs and create tally tables to record similarities among classmates.
Students can write about the assignment in their journal, and share with the class.

 

Evaluation of students:

Checking each student’s graph sheets can be used as a formal evaluation. A more informal evaluation that can be used for this activity is one of the extensions suggested.

I can use formal and informal assessment strategies to determine whether or not the students had an understanding of the material. Informal conversations with students enable me to ask probing questions to evaluate their thinking strategies and development of the concept of data representation. Checking each student’s graph sheets can be used as a formal evaluation. A more informal evaluation that can be used for this activity is one of the extensions suggested.
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