Graphing Authentically Using your TpT Sales

So this week was the BIG Teacher Appreciation Sale over on TpT. There have been a few times when I've accidentally left my phone on, and my TpT app has cha-chinged during school. The first time it happened, the class was completely quiet and it scared the heebee geebees outta of my kiddos. I then, of course, had to explain what it was. They were so fascinated and asked what things I sold on this website. So I told them the different things we were working on that I sell, and some things that I have bought from other teachers on this site.

I decided that I would purposely keep my phone on during the sale May 5-6, and I would have the kiddos keep track of my cha-chings. They were so cute! With each cha-ching they would applaud as a class. It was hilarious! My colleague across the hall came in and said..."did we get a cha-ching?" Oh, I could tell that this was a great idea!

Such a great idea, that I needed to keep it going. So we kept track through Friday.

Then I started thinking...How cool would it be for my students to take this data and graph it. You see, we have 15 days left, and we haven't touched on data and graphing too much. *LIGHT BULB* I decided to print off my excel sheet of my sales May 1-8 of this year (4 of the days we kept track).

To find this, go to your Sales Details, and scroll to the bottom to find the generate excel file.

I also printed off centimeter grid paper.

I was really excited to do this impromptu activity with my kiddos. I started explaining that we were going to graph each day's sales in May. I told them that before we started the graph, we needed to come up with a title for our graph...it had to be clear to those who saw it, what information they were looking at. We came up with "Miss J's TpT Sales May 1-8".

We then talked about the x and y axes, and what information we would have. I explained that we wanted to use as much as the grid as possible, so we decided each day would be 1 cm wide, and separate each day with 2 cm. We then talked about labeling the y axis. I told them we needed to see what our maximum sales number was. The students immediately went to their excel sheets and determined that 13 was the highest. (Don't judge if that's normal for you...and hang in there if that's a rarity for you). We determined that we could only do 1cm=1sale, so our max would be 16 sales on our grid.

Next, it was time to draw our bars. We started with the 1st, and I asked them how many sales I had on May 1st. They were quickly able to tell me 3. I asked them I would show that on my graph. My little smarties knew they'd need to fill in 3 sq cm. We did the 1-3 together, then I sent them off to do 4-8 on their own.

After I saw that most kiddos were done, we went through them together. They did a super job! I then posed these 4 questions to them to answer on the back of their grid paper.

And what do ya know? While they were writing their answers, we got a cha-ching! They applauded, and I told them they needed to show that extra sale in their graph.

I loved this activity because the kids had so much buy in. They knew how I got the information, recorded their own data, created a graph, and analyzed the data. I've already decided we will be doing this for the rest of the school year. On Friday, we're going to create double bar graphs to compare 2014-2015. I can't wait! :)

If you try this out with your students, I would love for you to email me at thrivingin3rd@gmail.com or tag me on Instagram, @missjohnstonsjourney.

Happy Graphing! Graphics used in this posts images can be found in my TpT Store.