Elf Glyph

This Mathwire elf glyph comes complete with legend and downloadable patterns to create your student glyphs.  As with all glyphs, teachers should feel free to adjust the legend to best fit the information on your students.

Creating their own glyphs requires students to follow a legend.  However, teachers should be sure to also provide opportunities for students to analyze the class glyphs with questions that require them to identify specific information in the glyphs such as:

• Does anyone have a "twin glyph" or someone whose glyph is exactly like yours?
• How many people in the class like to make snowmen?
• Do more people like warm weather or cold weather?
• How many girls like to go sledding?

Turkey Glyph

Students in Mrs. Bestle's class in Keansburg, NJ, created turkey glyphs that tell a story about how they celebrate Thanksgiving and what foods they like to eat on that special day.  It's great to have students create the legend(key) for what different parts of the turkey glyph mean (e.g. like white or dark meat, eat home or away, like gravy, feather colors for different vegetables, etc.)

Glyphs are a great visual display of data and may be used to create a seasonal bulletin board of student work.  Be sure to use the display for some data analysis activities. 

• Will more people in this class eat at home or away for Thanksgiving?
• Do more people in this class like corn or potatoes
• How many people in this class like yams?
  
  

Developing the legend(key) with students allows teachers to customize the activity to fit individual classes.  Creating a legend for a glyph is a higher-order thinking skill that develops critical thinking skills. 

 

See turkey glyph for one teacher's legend and lesson plan for this activity.

Snowman Glyph

Students will enjoy creating snowman glyphs to picture data about themselves.  Adapt the legend to fit your particular class and/or location.  As students become accustomed to creating glyphs, it's easy to adapt holiday craft projects to become glyphs.  Teachers like to involve students in designing the legend for these projects which requires higher-order thinking skills as they analyze what would be important data to know and how best to picture it in the particular glyph.

Display completed glyphs on a class bulletin board and challenge students to analyze the class data by asking pertinent questions:

• Do more people in this class ride the bus or walk to school?
• Do most people in the class have siblings?
• What set of months have the least birthdays for this class?
• Do you think these results will be the same for Mrs. ________'s class?  Why or why not?

See more Mathwire Snowman Math Activities.