Summer SAVY 2019: Session 3, Day 3 – The One to Beat (Rising 3rd/4th)

Posted by hallep on Wednesday, June 26, 2019 in Grade 3, Grade 4, SAVY.

Hello SAVY parents!  Today, we added two new vocabulary terms to our word wall: scatterplot and slope. The emphasis today was on analyzing change.  We were able to study how change in one variable is related to change in another.  Tables and coordinate graphs were used to assist students in the data analysis process as they organized information to aid in the search for number patterns.

In the morning lesson, students were able to investigate linear relationships by assuming a constant rate of speed for a man walking across the ocean.  They completed a table and a scatter plot (a graph of unconnected dots representing the ordered pairs from the table) showing the relationship of time to distance.  The students noticed that the rate of change was constant which meant that all points would lie on the same line.  Next, they were able to compare Mr. Bricka’s record to the record of Mr. Strel by plotting the data on the same graph.  In the new scenario, a man swims for the same amount of time as the man walking across the ocean (60 days) but travels half the distance.  Students made a table for this scenario and then graphed the distance traveled against the time for both scenarios and compared the two graphs, paying careful attention to the steepness or slope of the lines and what the difference in the steepness indicates.  In both cases, because of the assumed constant rate of travel, students were able to explain why the points for each graph all lie on the same line when they are plotted and the students understood the term linear relationships.

In the afternoon lesson, students investigated a world record that was set as a community effort by students, Girl Scout troops, senior citizens groups and others as part of a fund-raiser for a community college.  The proceeds of the fund-raising went toward college scholarships.  The record that the students investigated in involved making a chain of paper links.  Students made their own chains, time themselves, measured their chains, and determined the chain lengths that they could make in different amounts of time.  In this lesion, we also investigated linear relationships that result from building a chain at a constant rate.  We graphed the data and looked at the steepness of a line (slope) and determined what would happen if the rate changed.  We discussed differences in the starting point (y-intercept) as well as the differences in steepness (slope).

Please remember to log the pages your student reads each day as we attempt to create a record of 10,000 pages read by the last class meeting. Our running total of number of pages read so far is 2,543 pages. Thank you so much for another successful day and I look forward to another summer session of fun and learning.

See you tomorrow!

–D. Polk