I downloaded thirty-or-so old school album covers (like, old school), enough for each member of them class, printed them all out on matte photo paper for $4.50 at a photo booth
The kid categorized her reaction to her own album cover as one of “Love,” “Like,” “Dislike,” or “Hate.”
Then she got back to her desk and made two stacked bar charts. One for her own design tastes. And one for how well the class regarded her album cover.
I used the same album cover for each of my three algebra periods and had them use the same color legend so the result was a kind-of-slick representation of how the classes differed. (For instance, third period had some extreme reactions to the Devo cover below while the other two periods were more tempered in their enthusiasm.)

Fun questions to ask:
- Who loved the most covers?
- Who hated the most covers?
- Whose cover was the most hated?
- Whose cover was the most liked?

Stacked Bar Template I
Album Covers We (Dis)like Handout
The Album Covers We Used (ready for 4×6 printing)
3 Comments
Ben Chun
November 23, 2007 - 9:02 pm -Are you going to teach pie charts too? I think this lesson and the last one are great in terms of getting students involved and bought in to what they’re learning.
Rick
November 23, 2007 - 9:36 pm -Devo was in when I was these kids’ age, so I can imagine how un-hip it would be for any of them to have actually listened to the thing. Oh, good call on the Los Lobos and the Dire Straits.