Cricket Contest and graph

• See the data collection sheet that goes with this lesson-
• Keep crickets as pets!

Warning: You must arrange for the students to wash their hands after handling the crickets!

Objectives:

Measurement with a yardstick, realistic estimation, graphing results, comparison and contrast. Students measure how far different crickets can jump. They record the lengths and compare the results in a graph.

Materials:

Click here for the data collection worksheet that's ready to copy!

• Roughly enough crickets for each pair of students. They can be purchased at any pet store that sells reptiles such as PETCO or PETSMART. You can keep them as pets easily. They drink water from a saturated cotton ball. They love to eat corn flour or masa.
• Several yard sticks or tape measures .

Focus:

1. Show the students the crickets. Ask students to describe and act out how crickets walk and jump. Ask students to describe how this is different than walking and jumping for humans. Measure how far a boy and girl in the class can jump (in feet and inches).
2. Have students PREDICT in their journals how far a cricket can jump. (In this we are asking how far but not how high.)

Modeling:

You'll have to give several clear examples to show the children how to record the lengths of the jumps.

1. Place the yardstick in front of you on the ground
2. Hold a cricket in the palm a few inches above the ground at the beginning of the yardstick.
3. Never throw the cricket but you can move your palm to get the cricket to jump.
4. Put your finger where the cricket landed and say the length in inches.
5. Write down the length of the jump.

Procedure:

1. Give each pair of students a cricket. (Decide on what combination of pairs and groups will record jumps together based on your students and the number of yardsticks you have. )
2. Supervise the recording of the lengths. Help the students organize. Monitor that students focus on the data.
3. Return to the classroom and have the students describe how the longest jump for each cricket can be shown on a graph.

I always tell my students this example about graphs: I can easily understand one student who is talking. I can sometimes even understand two students who are talking to me at the same time. But when three students are talking to me at the same time I can hardly understand anything. I can see one student's paper by itself. I can compare two students' paper together at the same time. But, can I see all the papers of all the students in the whole class all at the same time? If I use a graph I can see all the students' papers at the same time because each paper in the class is represented in the graph.

Close:

Have the students answer their predictions about how far a cricket can jump. How well did you estimate? Why can boys and girls jump so much farther than crickets? Write or discuss why we use a graph.

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