Online Graphing Tools

For two years, I was the Technology Specialist at a school in Georgia. During that time, I amassed a large collection of websites that I use with my students. You can download my E-Book of Websites for the Elementary Classroom for free from Teachers Pay Teachers or Smashwords, or, you can check back here each week for the website suggestion.

When I taught in the computer lab, one of the skills every grade level worked on was creating graphs.  My K – 2 students worked on kid friendly software that was installed on our computers and I introduced the students in 3rd – 5th grade to Excel.  While these are great options, they cost a lot of money.  Luckily, there are free, online graphing programs available, which work wonderfully in the classroom.  Here are two I particularly like:

Online Chart Tool

 

 

Create a Chart - Classic

 

Both of these tools allow students to choose the correct type of graph, enter data, title their graph, label their axis and customize the color scheme. Once your graph is created, the Online Chart Tool allows you to download your graph directly to your computer while the Create a Chart site gives you a printable graph. 

How could you use these websites in your classroom?

Coordinate Graphing iPad App

My new favorite iPad App is Geometry Pad.  It’s a great app for working on coordinate graphs, perimeter, area, and even negative numbers.

This week, my class connected the iPad to our projector and and projected the main screen onto the board (where I had handily taped a piece of chart paper).  I traced the main axis onto the graph paper, and then the kids used the projected graph paper to find the coordinate graph points for their hearts. (My way of integrating Valentine’s day, lol!)  Then, when we turned off the projector and voila we had a coordinate graph.   

Real Life Graphing Survey

Last week was Heritage Week for my school.  We spent the week learning about where the students in our schools come from.  We were also learning about graphing.  I decided to integrate the two topics by having my students survey the students in the school and graph the information.  They asked the students the following four questions:

1.)  What country are you from?

2.)  What languages do you speak?

3.)  How many kids are in your family?

4.)  What month were you born in?

While the students were surveying the school, they created a tally chart.  Then, the students created frequency charts, bar graphs and picto-graphs with the information they collected.  If you would like to do this activity with your kids, feel free to grab a free copy of my Heritage Week Graph Packet for free from Google Docs.