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Graphing the
Annual Food Drive


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Subjects

  • Mathematics
    --Applied Math
    --Arithmetic
    --Statistics
  • Health
    --Nutrition
  • Social Studies
    --Civics
    --Economics
    --Holidays

Grade

  • K-2
  • 3-5
  • 6-8
  • 9-12

Brief Description

Many schools collect food for local food banks, kitchens, and shelters at this time of year. Why not graph the results so students can actually see the results of their efforts?

Objectives

Students

  • graph the number of items contributed to the food drive.
  • compare daily results to other days or to an overall goal.
  • answer questions based on the graph.

Keywords

graph, bar graph, food drive, community service, shelter, homeless, food bank

Materials Needed

  • paper
  • markers

Lesson Plan

Thanksgiving and the December holidays offer great opportunities to involve students in community service. Many schools plan annual food or clothing drives to benefit local organizations at this time of year. So why not turn this community service project into a learning opportunity. Have students graph their class's contributions day by day. Then create a large graph that illustrates all classes'/students' contributions to the school-wide goal. Create that graph in a high-traffic area of the school so all students are bound to see it each day. The presence of that large graph can motivate students to "grow the graph" each day or to achieve or exceed the ultimate goal of the annual food-drive campaign.

Things to Consider

  • How long is your school's food drive? Does it go on for a week? several weeks? If your food drive lasts for one week, you will want to create a graph that monitors daily results. If your drive lasts for several weeks, you might use the graph to monitor week-to-week results.
  • If you are monitoring food-drive contributions, do you accept canned and packaged goods? Some students in each class might track and graph canned-goods contributions only. Others might graph packaged (boxes, bags, etc.) goods. Then students might come together each day to record the total of canned and packaged goods for their class; that information will be forwarded to the office, or to the class that is responsible for creating the school-wide graph in the hallway.

When the Graphing Is Done...

  • When the food drive is over and the graphing is done, you might create a final class or whole-school graph and post it for all to see. Then create a work sheet that engages students as they answer grade-appropriate questions about the graph that they helped create.
  • Create a page of grade-appropriate math word problems related to the food drive. Questions might include...

Grades K-2

  • On Monday, Hector brought in four cans of food and two packages of food. How many food items did he bring in all?
  • Jasmine brought 2 cans of food and 6 packages of food. How many more packages than cans did she bring?

Grades 3-5

  • Students in our class brought in 34 food items on Monday, 23 on Tuesday, and 39 on Wednesday. How many food items were collected in all during the first three days of the food drive?
  • Our goal was to collect 75 cans of food for the food drive. Students collected 52 cans of food during the first three days of the food drive. How many more cans are needed to reach the goal?

Grades 5-up

  • Our class collected 92 items for the food drive. If the average value of an item was 79 cents, what was the total value of all the items we collected?
  • The 22 students in our class brought in a total of 264 cans and packages of food. What was the average number of food items brought in by each person?

Assessment

Use the data collected to create a work sheet. Grade students on their work.

Lesson Plan Source

EducationWorld.com

Submitted By

Gary Hopkins

National Standards 

MATHEMATICS: Number and Operations
GRADES Pre-K - 2
NM-NUM.PK-2.1 Understand Numbers, Ways of Representing Numbers, Relationships Among Numbers, and Number Systems
NM-NUM.PK-2.2 Understand Meanings of Operations and How They Relate to One Another
NM-NUM.PK-2.3 Compute Fluently and Make Reasonable Estimates
GRADES 3 - 5
NM-NUM.3-5.1 Understand Numbers, Ways of Representing Numbers, Relationships Among Numbers, and Number Systems
NM-NUM.3-5.2 Understand Meanings of Operations and How They Relate to One Another
NM-NUM.3-5.3 Compute Fluently and Make Reasonable Estimates
GRADES 6 - 8
NM-NUM.6-8.1 Understand Numbers, Ways of Representing Numbers, Relationships Among Numbers, and Number Systems
NM-NUM.6-8.2 Understand Meanings of Operations and How They Relate to One Another
NM-NUM.6-8.3 Compute Fluently and Make Reasonable Estimates
GRADES 9 - 12
NM-NUM.9-12.1 Understand Numbers, Ways of Representing Numbers, Relationships Among Numbers, and Number Systems
NM-NUM.9-12.2 Understand Meanings of Operations and How They Relate to One Another
NM-NUM.9-12.3 Compute Fluently and Make Reasonable Estimates

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-12.2 Select, Apply, and Translate Among Mathematical Representations to Solve Problems
NM-REP.PK-12.3 Use Representations to Model and Interpret Physical, Social, and Mathematical Phenomena

SOCIAL SCIENCES: Civics
GRADES K - 4
NSS-C.K-4.5 Roles of the Citizen

GRADES 5 - 8
NSS-C.5-8.5 Roles of the Citizen
GRADES 9 - 12
NSS-C.9-12.5 Roles of the Citizen

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11/07/2005