Moving Forward (Completed)

Chapter Thirty Four

Katherine's class had come along nicely. They could work independently, well as independently as any nine year old could, allowing her the opportunity to work with them in small groups. The Thanksgiving holiday was fast approaching and her students attention spans were quickly dwindling, but for the most part they were on task, her room was just a bit louder then normal. You choose your battles though. Kids talking while working was preferable to kids that were completely off task. It's why she always planned fun activities for the days preceding a break. Something engaging that the students would enjoy working on while still actually learning something. She typically preferred to teach this way as opposed to worksheets, but she saved the more fun activities for times like these.

Their current math unit was on data, so she had tasked her students with finding out what country different items around their homes were made. They compiled their data as a class and then broke into smaller groups to figure out how to create a bar graph to display the information.

"Ms. Morgan?"

"Yes Hannah." Katherine smiled up at her student from her chair at her small group table after finishing the note she was making on the progress the last small group she had worked with had made.

"My group thinks we've figure out how to create the graph."

Katherine smiled and motioned for Hannah and the rest of her group that was standing behind her to sit. "What's your plan?"

She loved this activity because it got her students thinking well above grade level since the bar graph was more complicated than they were expected to know. In addition to that, the whole class was determined to be the first to figure it out, because lunch in the classroom was the prize for the winning group.

"Along here we were thinking numbers." Sammy said, pointing at the rough draft they had created.

"And what's that called?" Katherine could tell by looking at their bar graph they had won, but she still wanted to make them work for it.

"The y-axis." Jarod answered.

"What numbers are going along the y-axis?"

"How many of each item were made in a certain country." Hannah said.

Katherine nodded. "Ok, and how are you going to differentiate between the different countries?"

"Along the x-axis," Sammy smiled at her when he used the correct vocabulary word, "we thought we'd put the names of each country there."

"Ok," Katherine nodded again, "but how will we know what came from which country?"

"We've broken the items down by categories," Hannah replied while pointing to the key they had made with school supplies, clothing, electronics, toys, amongst a handful more. The categories had been color coded to match what they had drawn on their graph. "We were thinking we could group the categories over each country."

"I think that'll work." Katherine smiled.

"So does that mean we've won?" Jacob asked.

"It does. Tomorrow I'll meet you in the cafeteria to bring you up here after you've made it through the lunch line."

An excited yes emitted from the small group, while groans could be heard from the rest of the class.

"Can we watch Home?" Hannah grinned.

"Twenty five minutes of it." Katherine chuckled, knowing they wouldn't really care that they wouldn't get to finish the movie. "Ok, now you get to explain to the class what you've come up with."