Graphing with Grade 4

I like things to be pretty.
                                 Well-designed.
                                            Aesthetically pleasing.

But sometimes, the function is the main thing.

Today, I made a rudimentary graph. Then I snapped a picture of it. And now I'm posting it. See, just this weekend, I read Mr. E's post about graphing favorite shapes. I've done similar things before, but with that post fresh in my mind and five extra minutes at the end of 4th grade art, I decided to do an informal poll of the students. They had just spent the period doing a continuous line drawing of their shoe followed by another (not necessarily continuous) line drawing of their shoe. Afterwards, they selected their favorite and mounted it on a piece of colored paper.

      So which was their favorite?

As much as the kids complain about the challenge of a continuous line drawing, I knew from last year that many students select that as the better of their drawings. How many today? I asked each student, just placing a dot in the rectangle to signify each response. The class was almost evenly split.

It was quick. It was ugly. I'm glad I did it. We practiced math skills while recognizing diverse opinions and reflecting on our own art.

Now I want to create a more permanent unlabeled graph for future activities. The question is where and how...