Data Standards Common Core Style Second Grade

One of my favorite Common core standards is this data standard that runs from grade 2- grade 5.  I have already posted about how I addressed this data in standard in grade 4 and grade 5 if you want to check them out!  

Here is the standard for second grade

CCSS.Math.Content.2.MD.D.9 Generate measurement data by measuring lengths of several objects to the nearest whole unit, or by making repeated measurements of the same object. Show the measurements by making a line plot, where the horizontal scale is marked off in whole-number units.

Compared to the grade 4 and 5 standards, this seemed like a piece of cake!  

Off to a bad start

So I decided that since it was so nice and sunny outside that we would go outside and collect some fun data.   We measured how far each second grader could do a feet together forward hop.  After a few practice hops, each student had their official measurement done by hopping the length of a yard stick (actually 2 yard sticks end to end).

Although the hopping was a lot of fun, the results were disastrous when we went back into the classroom and tried to construct a line plot.  The problem was that the results ranged from 31 inches to 72 inches.  Also only 2 people jumped exactly the same distance.  We did learn together that a line plot is not a good choice to display such data.  I wanted to quickly save the lesson so we measured each kid's height to the nearest inch instead.  MUCH BETTER results.

A line plot showing the heights of second graders constructed during a whole group lesson

A strong finish

The class results based on height look much better!  Their is enough spread and variation to make it interesting but small enough to keep it manageable.  Here are some questions we came up with that could be asked about our line plot

How many kids were measured?

What is the most popular height in second grade?

How tall is the tallest student? (this is great because when kids look at line plots without ever having constructed one themselves, they will often look for the tallest column of x's and respond with 51 inches.  Even after building this as a group I still had kids that went there.)

How tall is the shortest student (another question easily answered wrong.)

How much taller is the tallest student than the shortest student?

This was a good first look at line plots with my second graders.  I need to make sure we do a few more lessons like these before the end of the year.  

Any suggestions on good measurement data to use for second grade line plots?