Kindergarten Students Graph Data Using Numbers on an iPad

Graphing data isn't just for accountants and math students anymore. It can also be used by elementary students to see a visual representation of numbers, or in this case graph the medals won by the top 10 countries at the Sochi Olympics.

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For many years I have turned to Microsoft Excel for all my graphing and data collection needs. However, this year I have started to use Numbers on the iPad. At first glance I was a worried about how I would enter data and more importantly would students easily be able to graph their data. I was pleasantly surprised to see how easy it was to use.

With the Sochi Olympics coming to an end I had the idea of introducing Numbers to the students by having them graph the number of medals each country won.

After sending an email to all the teachers in our lower school I was excited to hear from one of our teachers that she would love to use this lesson to wrap-up their study of the Olympics. The surprising part was that she teaches Kindergarten!

Could 5 and 6 year-olds really use Numbers? Much to my delight they didn't have any trouble.

We started with a simple exploration of the App,  moved to entering data and practiced how to select cells, and finished students sharing what they noticed.

The next step was to have the enter the data into actual sheet and start graphing.  They easily opened their email, saved the attachment into Numbers and stated entering the data. After selecting the cells and choosing a graph style the room was filled with oohs and aahs.

The lesson went so well, the teachers decided to use it more often and I even noticed them using it during morning work to graph data such as the number of boys and girls.

I would love to hear way you think Numbers could be used in the classroom.  Feel free to leave a comment below or say hi on twitter.  @scott_lieberman