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The Graph Club
Kidspiration
Kid Works Deluxe
ClarisWorks for Kids
Kid Pix Studio
Netscape Composer

 
 
Graph Club by Tom Snyder Productions
What does it do? 
The Graph Club is a tool that helps students manipulate five types of graphs to see how the same data can be represented differently (adjust one graph and the others change simultaneously). Students can read, write, create and interpret picture graphs, bar graphs, pie graphs, line graphs and tables.
How does this link to early literacy?  Students can actively construct visual representations of how they have analyzed, compared, interpreted and synthesized information introduced in a book they've read.  Pictures and images help young children describe their ideas in a concrete manner, while reading and manipulating graphs fosters higher level comprehension skills like reasoning, evaluating, and synthesizing.  Practice with linking concepts in literature and math helps young children form new connections with text and fosters the transfer of thinking skills from one context to another.  Tools like The Graph Club enable teachers to easily link literature and non-fiction texts to math tasks that can enrich a young child's experiences with books. 
Online Resources

 
 
Responding to Literature with The Graph Club
Literature: Footprints in the Snow, by Cynthia Benjamin (Hello Reader, Level 1) 
Software Tool: The Graph Club, by Tom Snyder Productions
Additional Internet Resource:  Tracks Left in the Night 
Grade Level: K-1

Tasks

  1. Shared or Guided Reading: While reading the text, notice the types of animals in the book and how many legs each animal has.  After reading the text, encourage children to think of other animals that make footprints and discuss how many legs each of those animals has. 
  2. Center Activity or Guided Reading: In a small group of center activity, ask children to make a list of animals they know.  Write each animal's name or draw a picture of the animal on an index card and write the number of footprints that each animal makes. Sort the cards by how many prints each makes. 

    3. Center or Partner Activity at Computer: Bring the index cards you made to this center.  Use The Graph Club software to create either a bar graph, line graph, picto-graph, or pie chart that illustrates which animals make the same number of footprints. Save and print your chart. Read your chart to a friend.
Product Example: 

Here is a picto-graph

Here is a bar graph