Rate It

Goal: Line up by your rating

Preparation

Choose something the children will rate, such as how much they like the weather, how much they like spinach, or how the school day went.

Choose a rating scale, such as:
1 to 5.
0 to 10.
-5 to 5.

1. Give your rating

Explain the task:
Rate your day on a scale of 0 to 10. The better your day, the higher your rating.

Hold up your fingers to show your rating.

If you are using the scale -5 to 5, check that everyone understands that -5 is a really bad day, -4 is bad but not the worst, -3 is a little less bad, and so on. To show negative numbers, children hold out the appropriate number of fingers on a lowered hand.

2. Line up

Announce the beginning (highest number) and direction of the line. Children line up in order of their ratings. If two children have the same rating, they stand beside one another.

 

3. Discuss the results

Children look down the line and find the highest, lowest, and most common rating. Voluteers explain why they gave the ratings they did.

Variations

Snack Attack (Grades K, 1, 2)
After snack each day, children rate how much they liked what they ate. Record their ratings and what they had for snack. Review the results with them at the end of the week. Are there some foods that everyone rated highly? Some that had a wide variation—some people liked it a lot but others didn’t? Some that no seemed to feel strongly about? Encourage children to identify healthy foods that everyone liked.

Number Cards (Grades K, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
Children make their own “rating cards” to use for Rate Your Day. They number a set of 11 index cards from -5 to 5, and then decorate the cards.

 

Number Stories (Grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
Children write stories or poems in which they rate events throughout the day.  For instance, a visit from a friend might be a “10,” a lost dollar a “-10,” and a game of jump rope a “7.” 

 

Books and Other Resources

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (Grades K, 1, 2)
Viorst, Judith. NY: Aladdin Books. 1987.

Less than Zero (Grades K, 1, 2)
Murphy, Stuart. NY: Harper Collins. 2003.

Spotlight

Negative Numbers

Young children learning to count begin associating numbers with amounts like 5 fingers or two cookies. They also learn that zero means nothing—no fingers and no more cookies. 

With negative numbers you can measure, compare, and show direction. You can’t have -3 things, but you can have a temperature of -3 or a negative bank balance when you owe money, and you can take three steps backwards for every step forward.

Connections

Below a goal

Negative numbers are used to show an amount below 0; they’re also used to show an amount below a target number or goal. For instance:

Dandelion After School needs an enrollment of 50 children to break even on costs for staff, space, materials, snacks, and insurance. They use negative and positive numbers to show enrollment status:

Month	# Enrolled	Compare to 50	Notes
August	41	-9	Time to advertise
September	49	-1	Almost covering expenses
October	65	+13	Getting crowded
November	70	+20	Full! Start a waiting list

 

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