Worksheet Grade 2 Art & Music
Dapplebrook Garden Rain Gauge Label: A Grade 2 Line Plot Sheet
Students design the colored number strip for a school garden rain gauge, then plot ten days of jar readings on a line plot and compare the depths they marked.
Objectives
- Students will design a colored number strip with evenly spaced whole-unit marks.
- Students will plot ten measurement readings on a line plot.
- Students will answer frequency and difference questions from their own line plot.
Vocabulary
Key words: rain gauge, line plot, reading, label, scale
Teacher overview
The garden behind the made-up Dapplebrook school keeps a straight-sided jar outside as a rain gauge, and a class checks the water depth in whole centimeters on every rainy day. This worksheet asks students to design the paper number strip that gets taped to the jar, which is a genuine design constraint rather than a decoration, because the marks have to be evenly spaced or the readings mean nothing.
Print the sheet with a blank number strip from 1 to 5 down one side and an empty line plot marked 1 through 5 along the bottom. Ten readings are supplied in the table so every student plots the same data and the key holds for the whole class. Have students work the design items before the plotting items, since spacing the bands evenly on the strip gives them a model for spacing the marks on the plot.
Student Worksheet
Read aloud: A school garden keeps a jar outside to catch rain. On each rainy day, a class measures how deep the water is. Here are ten readings.
| Day | Depth |
|---|---|
| 1 | 2 cm |
| 2 | 3 cm |
| 3 | 1 cm |
| 4 | 4 cm |
| 5 | 2 cm |
| 6 | 3 cm |
| 7 | 2 cm |
| 8 | 5 cm |
| 9 | 3 cm |
| 10 | 2 cm |
- Color the number strip. Give each number a band of its own color.
- Draw a small picture at the top of the strip. Show what the jar catches.
- Put one mark above a number for each reading. How many marks in all?
- Which depth came up the most?
- How many days had 3 cm?
- How many days had more than 3 cm?
- The deepest day was 5 cm. The lowest day was 1 cm. What is the difference?
- Add the two deepest days. How deep is that in all?
- Why must the spaces between the numbers be the same size? Write one sentence.
- Which color did you pick for 5 cm? Tell why that color should stand out.
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: Five bands, one color per number. Any five colors are acceptable as long as each number from 1 to 5 gets its own band and the bands are the same height as each other.
- Answer: A picture of rain or raindrops. Accept a cloud, falling drops, or a jar with drops entering it, since all three name what the gauge collects.
- Answer: 10 marks. There is one mark for each of the ten readings in the table, so the marks above 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 add to ten in total.
- Answer: 2 cm. The depth 2 cm appears on days 1, 5, 7, and 10, which is four days, more than any other depth.
- Answer: 3 days. The depth 3 cm appears on days 2, 6, and 9.
- Answer: 2 days. Only day 4 at 4 cm and day 8 at 5 cm are deeper than 3 cm.
- Answer: 4 cm. Subtract the lowest reading from the deepest: 5 - 1 = 4.
- Answer: 9 cm. The two deepest readings are 5 cm and 4 cm, and 5 + 4 = 9.
- Answer: Even spaces keep the marks fair. Accept any sentence saying that uneven spaces would make one number look bigger or smaller than it really is, or that the reader could not tell how deep the water was.
- Answer: Student choice with a reason. Accept any color paired with a reason such as it being the brightest, the darkest, or the only warm color on a cool strip, so a reader notices the deepest mark first.
Differentiation
Support
Give these students a line plot with the first three readings already marked and the table rows for those days highlighted, so the matching between table and plot is visible before they work alone. Provide unifix cubes to stack for items 5 through 8, and let the stacks be the work shown. Accept a spoken answer for item 9 that you scribe on the line.
Extension
Ask these students to add two more rainy days of their own choosing, each under 6 cm, mark them on the plot, and rewrite the answers to items 3 and 4 with the new data. They can also design a second strip that counts by twos and write one sentence about which strip is easier to read from across the garden.
ELL supports
Show a real jar with a taped paper strip before the sheet is handed out, and pour water in twice so depth and reading are seen, not just read. Put a small ruler picture beside the word depth in the table header. Accept items 9 and 10 in the home language, then add the English words deep, deepest, and spaces together while looking at the finished strip.
Extensions
Check the best-designed strips against a ruler so each number sits that many centimeters above the jar bottom, tape them onto real jars, and set them outside in two different spots, such as one in the open and one under a tree edge, then compare a week of readings on two line plots. Students quickly notice that placement changes the data, which opens an honest conversation about why a gauge has to sit where nothing blocks the rain.