Graphing and Estimation - Who Knew!

At the start of September Jay-Ellen had her class create a graph on what month their birthday was in.  Each student put their name and date on a mini-post it note and then lined it up above their birthday month.  They hung this graph up in the classroom for all to see.

A few weeks later she decided to use a jar that she had called "Estimation Station" and have her students estimate how many jelly beans they thought were in the jar.  Here is what the jar looked like:

They collected their estimations on mini post it notes.  When they were done doing their estimates, they then noticed they had a lot of post-it notes and needed a way to organize them.  They thought back to their graph and wondered if they could use a similar strategy to order their estimation from least to greatest.  What became tricky, and involved them using application skills, was when they had multiple estimates of the same number.   Jay-Ellen guided them to look at their graph and then see what they did when more than one person had a birthday in a month.  They knew that they could stack the numbers on top of each other.

A great way to not only compare and order whole numbers, but also to get some estimation and graphing in as well.