Family Diagrams

In the past few weeks, the students have become quite interested in families and how they can be quite different. As a part of our morning meeting, we decided to investigate how many students had brothers, how many had sisters, and how many were only children. On the floor, we place a red circle and asked the student to place their doll inside the circle if they had a sister. If the students did not have a sister, they were asked to place their doll outside of the circle. We then replaced the red circle with a yellow one and repeated this same instructions for students with brothers.

Then we decided to put out both circles at the same time. One student raised her hand and noted that she has a brother and a sister. After some problem solving, the student suggested overlapping the two circles. She then concluded that students with both a brother and a sister could place their doll in the middle where the circles overlap. Without even noticing, the students had created a Venn diagram!

Now that the students had become familiar with grouping in this manner, we had them complete another Venn diagram for the morning message. This diagram involved the students deciding if they had a dog, a cat, both, or none of the above.