Sorting and classifying activities promote reasoning skills. A specific les-son illustrating this type of activity is in the reasoning section in Chapter 3.
Organizing data
There are many methods for organizing data, and a number of these may be explored by young children. In an effort to help children be successful, some teachers determine the way that data will be organized by providing preprinted graph paper complete with labeled grids and titles. However, children miss a vital step in the handling and examining of data if they go directly to a more limited task like coloring a graph made by someone else.
For example, counting different color candies and then coloring corre-sponding squares on a preprinted graph is an activity lots of teachers use. In one early childhood classroom where children were completing this ac-tivity, they were asked to explain what they were doing. The typical re-sponse: "You color these squares and then you get to eat the candy." A lim-ited understanding at best!
What is more effective is for children to collect data and then bring them back to the group (or to a small group of children within the class) to sort and organize in ways they work out themselves. When a child states, "This is a mess! I don't know what the answer is!" the teacher can seize the mo-ment to offer ideas about how data can be organized and displayed so that at a glance we can find the answers we're looking for. While the resulting representation might not be as polished or organized as one using a com-mercially produced format, it is the child's own work and evidence of the child's budding understanding of organizing and displaying information.
Representing data using concrete objects, pictures, and graphs
Visual displays of data are actually direct extensions of sorting and clas-sifying. With young children, the teacher's purpose is to help them see graphing and other such representations as ways of showing information so that people can "read" it just by looking and use it to make comparisons.
Using concrete objects is air essential first step in representing data. By standing with a group of Yes people or No people, each child shows his or her response, and collectively the groups of children form a simple physical representation of the data. Placing pattern blocks or other items in rows in ice cube trays (see, for instance the Ice Cube Tray Graphing activity, p. 163) or on ten frames, one per compartment, according to their attributes—orange squares, green triangles, and so forth—forms a representation of categories in a way that easily translates into horizontal or vertical bar graphs.
Teachers can have children make tags to indicate their opinions on an is-sue, with each child placing her tag by the answer she chooses. Another method is to create picture cubes by putting each child's photo on an empty carton (e.g., milk containers). Children cast their votes by stacking their cube next to the answer of their choice.
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