Manatee Awareness Survey
- paper
- pencils
Objective.
Students will conduct a survey to investigate the public's manatee awareness and interpret their results in graph form.
Grade level 4-8
Materials
Action
1. Have the students bring graphs from newspapers and magazines to class. Discuss with the students what graphs are and what information they give us.
2. Conduct a sample survey with your class by asking them to vote for their favorite ice cream flavor:
a) chocolate
b) strawberry
c) other
3. Create a simple bar graph on the board showing the results of the class survey.
4. Divide students into groups of four to five. Have them create four survey questions to investigate how much people know about manatees (review and approve questions). It will be easier for students to graph the results if people are given three ways to respond: two answers and a "don't know" category.
For example:
How many manatees do you think live in Florida?
a) more than 2000
b) less than 2000
c) don't know
5. Have students survey people at school, home, and in their neighborhood. Encourage them to poll at least ten people of different ages and record the ages as they collect the data.
6. Let the students tabulate and graph the responses using the bar graph method. Ask them to make separate charts for each question, showing how people in different age categories answered (they might use 0-15, 16-30, 31-50, and over 50 years as categories).
7. Have the groups create colorful, final graphs to present to the class. As each group makes its presentation, try to track which age group knew the least and which age group knew the most about manatees.
8. Have each group develop a manatee awareness plan for the age group they surveyed that knew the least about the manatee. Posters, flyers, newspapers, or audio-visual presentations can be created to educate the group that scored the lowest on the survey.
Deeper Depths:1. Using a computer spreadsheet package, have each student create graphs using the information they have gathered. Bar graphs, line graphs, or pie graphs can be created on most software spreadsheet packages. Submit the graphs and an article about the data to the school or local newspaper. 2. Using a bulletin board, have the students develop a graph that compiles all the data they collected on all the groups. Discuss the variation of data between groups. |
