Worksheet Grade 2 Art & Music
Bramblegate Creek Clean-Up Bar Graph: A Grade 2 Color-Key Sheet
Students design a four-color key, color a bar graph of trash pulled from a made-up creek, and answer compare questions about the four groups they graphed.
Objectives
- Students will design a color key that matches four groups on a bar graph.
- Students will draw bars for four categories on a single-unit scale.
- Students will solve compare and put-together problems using their own graph.
Vocabulary
Key words: bar graph, color key, category, compare
Teacher overview
The town of Bramblegate is a made-up place with a creek behind its school, and in this scenario a second grade class spent one morning pulling trash out of it and sorting what they collected into four groups. The worksheet turns that count into a bar graph, and the design task carries real weight, because students choose the four colors, build the key, and then have to keep to that key while they color the bars.
Print the graph grid with the four category labels already in place along the bottom and a vertical scale numbered by ones to at least 35, with four empty key boxes beside it. The compare questions in items 5 through 8 are all within 100, so students can solve them from the table, from the bars, or from both, which lets you see which students are reading the data from the picture and which are still working from the numbers in the table.
Student Worksheet
Read aloud: Kids in the town of Bramblegate cleaned up a creek. They put the trash into four groups. Here is what they found.
| Group | How many pieces |
|---|---|
| Cans | 24 |
| Cups | 18 |
| Bags | 9 |
| Wrappers | 31 |
- Make a color key. Pick one color for each group. Color the four key boxes.
- Color the bars on the graph. Use your key. Each square stands for 1 piece.
- Which group had the most pieces?
- Which group had the fewest pieces?
- How many more wrappers than bags? Show your work.
- How many cans and cups in all? Show your work.
- How many pieces did the kids find in all? Show your work.
- Next year the kids hope to find 10 fewer cans. How many cans is that?
- Why does a color key help a reader? Write one sentence.
- Draw a small picture of the group with the most pieces. Write one sentence. Tell why that trash is bad for a creek.
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Answer Key
- Answer: Four different colors, one per group. Any four colors are correct as long as each group gets its own color and the four key boxes are filled in. Watch for a student who colors two groups the same shade, which breaks the key before the bars are even drawn.
- Answer: Four bars matching the key. The bars stand 24, 18, 9, and 31 squares tall for cans, cups, bags, and wrappers, and each bar's color matches its key box.
- Answer: Wrappers. The wrapper bar is the tallest at 31 pieces, which is more than the 24 cans, the 18 cups, and the 9 bags.
- Answer: Bags. The bag bar is the shortest at 9 pieces.
- Answer: 22 pieces. Subtract the bags from the wrappers: 31 - 9 = 22. Students who count up the difference between the two bar heights should reach the same 22.
- Answer: 42 pieces. Add the two groups: 24 + 18 = 42.
- Answer: 82 pieces. Add all four groups: 24 + 18 = 42, then 42 + 9 = 51, then 51 + 31 = 82.
Accept any order of adding, since the total does not change. - Answer: 14 cans. Take 10 away from the 24 cans: 24 - 10 = 14.
- Answer: The key tells the reader what each color stands for. Accept any sentence saying that the reader would not know which bar is which group without the key, or that the key saves the reader from guessing.
- Answer: A picture of a wrapper with a sentence about creek harm. The picture must show a wrapper, since wrappers were the largest group. Accept any reasonable reason in the sentence, such as trash making the water dirty, animals eating it, or the creek looking bad for people who visit it.
Differentiation
Support
Give these students a graph grid where the first bar is already colored and labeled, so the pattern of reading the table and building the bar is modeled on the page itself. Provide two-color counters for items 5 through 7 so the subtraction and addition can be built before they are written. Allow item 10 to be answered with the drawing plus a spoken sentence you scribe.
Extension
Ask these students to add a fifth group of their own, such as bottle caps, choose a count under 20 for it, add its bar and key color, and then rewrite item 7 with the new total. They can also redraw the graph with each square standing for 2 pieces and explain in one sentence what changes about the bars when the square is worth more.
ELL supports
Put a small picture beside each group name in the table and in the key: a can, a cup, a bag, and a wrapper. Pre-teach the words most, fewest, and in all with the bars themselves by pointing to the tallest and the shortest before students begin. Accept sentences for items 9 and 10 in the home language, and add the English words key and creek together during a short conference.
Extensions
Hold a real clean-up on school grounds with gloves and grabbers, leaving anything sharp, such as broken glass, for an adult to pick up. Sort what the class collects into the same four groups, and build a second bar graph beside this one. Displaying the two graphs side by side gives students a genuine comparison to talk about, and it gives the class a reason to redesign the color key so both graphs can share one legend.