Marie Lewis Student work blog week 7

     My students were given this question as a quick check after learning how to create line plots.  One of my students responded with this:

     The student plotted his graph by putting an x for every page read on the noted day of the week. He is on the right track because he understands the layout of a line plot and was capable of drawing the x's as he thought acceptable.  This work is wrong because the line plot is supposed to have a scale along the x-axis that includes the values in the problem.  For example, a good scale would have been from 1 to 20. This student does not have a scale, rather he listed the days of the week.  It seems as if the student thought he was supposed to keep track of how many pages were read each day.
     If I were to talk with this student, I would ask him his reasoning as to why he labeled each day of the week.  I would ask him to explain to me what he knows about what a line plot entails.  I would then restate this question, taking the days of the week away from the number values.  I think this is confusing because the student could have thought he had to keep the day and the value together.  The question would be better phrased as, " Throughout the week, Consuela read a different number of pages from her book each night.  She read 8 pages, 11 pages, 10 pages, 7 pages, 8 pages, and 8 pages. Create a line plot of this information." The specific days of the week are irrelevant, confusing the student to think he needed t keep track of how many pages he read each day, rather than focusing solely on the values.