Here in Brazil as in many places in the world, we are experiencing drought in most of the country. Students can feel the impact of climate change when their neighborhood’s water gets shut off for a few days. However, they might feel helpless in how they can make a difference. While I was working with a small group of 3rd students on some extension activities for graphing last week, I realized there was a perfect opportunity for cross-curricular connections and deep discussion.
I knew immediately I wanted to do a data talk with a rich data visualization so I hopped over to Jo Boaler’s YouCubed site and found a data visualization that was perfect for this situation. I showed it to the students and we just looked at it in silence for about 30 seconds. I asked, “what do you notice?” and “what do you wonder?” and immediately one girl shouted, “this is what we are learning about in social studies class!”
At my school, we teach the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and sustainability is a huge priority in general, so it was very exciting to see the cross-curricular connections being made. We looked more at the data visualization and it took us a few minutes to understand how to read it. The kids wondered why she would be cooking dinner at 11:00pm, until we finally realized that was actually 11:00am! The conversation was rich. We wondered when she uses the most water and when she uses the least. We talked about how much water we think she used in a day and if it was necessary to use so much water.
Then one student said, “You know, we could make these ourselves! All you would need to do is put it in Google Slides and make the images drag-able. I also think it would be better if we had two separate clocks, one for AM and one for PM, so it wouldn’t be so confusing.” EIGHT YEAR OLDS. TELLING ME HOW THEY WOULD ADAPT A PDF INTO AN INTERACTIVE SLIDE AND MODIFY IT FOR YOUNG CHILDREN. This is the world we are living in, and it is an exciting world indeed!
So, without further ado, here is where you can access the free activity. I really should give all credit to my small group of early finishers that I had the privilege of working with this week.
