discuss shape during histograms lesson

[retabak]

Working on rewriting formative assessment objectives, and (while looking for inspiration), encountered these Illustrated Math objectives:

• Compare and contrast (orally) bar graphs and histograms, recognizing that descriptions of shape, center, and spread don’t pertain to bar graphs.
• Describe (orally and in writing) the overall shape and features of a distribution represented on a histogram, including peaks, clusters, gaps, and symmetry.
• Identify histograms that display distributions with specific features.

Our histograms lesson covers bullets #1 and #3, but we are entirely lacking bullet #2! Regardless, during our box plots lesson, we ask students to compare / contrast box plots and histograms based on their shape. We've skipped a step that will help kids be successful with that! (as I've mentioned too often, I am not convinced students are adequately prepared to be successful with that activity, which technically SHOULD be something a sixth grader could complete.)