Web Quest

Chapter 3

PLANNING A PLAYGROUND

The Web Activity for Chapter 3 asks students to use their knowledge of surveys and graphing to plan a playground for the primary students in the school. While completing this task, your child will also learn additional computer skills such as inserting pictures into a document.

This activity uses the data available at several different Canadian companies' websites listed here:

Today's Playground
Kan-go-roo Playgrounds
Jambette Canada
Henderson Recreation Equipment

These companies advertise and sell playground equipment to cities, school boards and individuals. The sites allow the viewer to see pictures of the equipment and read descriptions of their suitability, size, and so on. These are only examples and you may have other sites that provide information about playground equipment.

Part of the task is for your child to create a survey to help them decide which playground equipment should be purchased by the school. Because most of the equipment is difficult to describe, your child should realize that "a picture is worth a thousand words" and, therefore, the survey should include a picture of each equipment choice. Your child has learned in this unit that a survey is often used to help people make decisions. If you use survey information in the work you do, you might want to share this information with your child.

The task provides your child with a Survey Chart that can be downloaded to your computer before he or she inserts the pictures into the boxes.

While your child is exploring the web pages and creating their graph, ask:

"Where will you find a link to pictures of play structures on this page?"
"Which 4 play structures will you choose for your survey? Should they all be similar or should there be differences between them? Why?"
"What is the largest number of people who chose a structure? How does this help you decide on a scale for your graph?"
"If you asked more people to complete the survey, would you use the same scale? Explain."

Your child may need some assistance in inserting each picture into the survey chart and resizing to fit the page.

Your child should be familiar with the following vocabulary to describe their graph and data:

scale, bar graph, range, interval, legend and survey.