Scientific Inquiry: Graphs

Teacher: Mrs. Oliver

Grade: 3
Content Area: Science

1. Content and Standards: Standard 3.1.3.A9- • Distinguish between scientific fact and
opinion. • Ask questions about objects, organisms, and events. • Understand that all
scientific investigations involve asking and answering questions and comparing the
answer with what is already known. • Plan and conduct a simple investigation and
understand that different questions require different kinds of investigations. • Use simple
equipment (tools and other technologies) to gather data and understand that this allows
scientists to collect more information than relying only on their senses to gather
information. • Use data/evidence to construct explanations and understand that scientists
develop explanations based on their evidence and compare them with their current
scientific knowledge. • Communicate procedures and explanations giving priority to
evidence and understanding that scientists make their results public, describe their
investigations so they can be reproduced, and review and ask questions about the
work of other scientists.

2. Prerequisites: Students should know that scientist use different tools to experiment and
gather information.

3. Essential Questions: How do scientists use data?

4. Materials and Equipment: Nearpod-online learning platform; 4 water bottles; vinegar, 4

balloons, baking soda, measuring tape, measuring cups

5. Instructional Objective: Students will know that there are different ways to organize data
and be able to make a bar graph to organize data.

 Instructional Procedures:
a. Before:
i. Teacher will begin with a short review of previous lesson on tools that
scientists use to make observations and gather information and prompt
students to think about what scientist do with this information.
ii. Teacher will state, and have students repeat, the lesson goal.
iii. Teacher will introduce the Balloon Blow Up experiment to students
and ask students to predict what they think will happen.
iv. Teacher will explain and complete each step of the experiment for
students to view.
v. Teacher will instruct students to record the data from the experiment,
while also modeling this.
vi. After experiment is completed, teacher will ask students, if they how
we can share our data with other scientists? After hearing students
responses, the teacher will ask students to hold onto those thoughts.
 b. During:
i. Teacher will introduce methods for organizing/sharing scientific data:
chart, data table, bar graph and model.
ii. Teacher will give examples and show pictures of each.
iii. Students will complete a matching activity on Nearpod based on the
methods of sharing data.
iv. Next, teacher will revisit the question of, how students can share the
from the Balloon Blow Up experiment with other scientist?
v. Students will view a BrainPop video about bar graphs.
vi. Teacher will review parts of a bar graph.
vii. Teacher will demonstrate how to make a bar graph using the data from
the experiment.
c. After:
i. Teacher will take a poll of the student’s favorite ice cream flavors.
ii. Teacher will instruct students to use this information to make a bar
graph of their own.
iii. Teacher will show student bar graphs to share with the class.
Prompting students to determine if the graphs contain all of the
necessary parts.
iv. Last, teacher will close by reminding students why scientists use bar
graphs.

6. Assessment: I will know if all students have met the instructional goal by their
completion of the bar graph at the end of the lesson. Students should be able to correctly
label the bar graph and use the recorded information to fill in the bars.

7. Differentiated Instruction: Students who need support in meeting the objective will
receive added verbal guidance from the teacher. The teacher should give clues/prompt
students to include all the parts of a graph. If more help is needed, teacher can provide
more support, by modeling some steps for students.