Before the Lesson
If you have never before used the free and easy-to-use Create a Graph tool, click the link and give it a shot. Creating beautiful pie and bar graphs is a simple process.
The Lesson
Valentine's Day cards are the second most popular seasonal cards to send. In this activity, students will use a free technology tool to create a simple circle or bar graph that illustrates the most popular seasonal cards.
Note: The greeting card industry divides greeting cards into two categories.
"Everyday cards" are cards that people might have reason to send on any/every day of the year. Cards such as
birthday cards fall into this category. Also anniversary, get well, friendship, and sympathy cards.
"Seasonal cards" are cards that are sent only at specific times of the year. Christmas cards, Valentine cards,
Hanukkah cards -- they all fall into this category.
According to greeting-card industry officials, seasonal card sales break down in this way:
Christmas cards account for 60% of annual sales.
Valentine's Day cards are second, accounting for 25% of sales.
Mother's Day cards follow with 4% of sales.
Easter cards account for 3% of sales.
Father's Day cards account for 3% of sales.
Other (Hanukkah, Thanksgiving, Halloween…) seasonal cards account for 5% of sales.
Write the above statistics on a board or chart in this way:
Christmas cards -- 60%
Valentine's Day cards -- 25%
Mother's Day cards -- 4%
Easter cards -- 3%
Father's Day cards -- 3%
Other seasonal cards -- 5%
Introduce students to the easy-to-use and free Create a Graph tool. Walk them through the simple process of creating a bar graph of those statistics. Then invite students to help you as you create a pie chart that shows that same data. The process is so easy that they should be feeling comfortable with it in no time. So give them some more greeting card stats and let them create another bar graph or pie chart on their own to illustrate the following statistics for sales of "every day" greeting cards.
Birthday cards -- 60%
Anniversary cards -- 8%
Get Well cards -- 7%
Friendship cards -- 6%
Sympathy cards -- 6%
Other -- 13%
Students might create this new chart/graph in the classroom computer center or in the school's computer lab.
Assessment
Did students follow instructions for creating the graph?
Lesson Plan Source
EducationWorld.com
Submitted By
Gary Hopkins
National Standards
MATHEMATICS: Representation GRADES Pre-K - 12 NM-REP.PK-12.1 Create and Use Representations to Organize, Record, and Communicate Mathematical Ideas NM-REP.PK-12.3 Use Representations to Model and
Interpret Physical, Social, and Mathematical Phenomena
TECHNOLOGY GRADES K - 12 NT.K-12.1 Basic Operations and Concepts NT.K-12.4 Technology Communications Tools
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For additional Valentine's Day or other holiday lesson plan, be sure to see Education World's special holiday archive.
For additional math lesson plans, see these Education World resources:
Holiday Greeting Cards: A Graphing Activity 
