We learned this activity from Connie Rivera, current President of the Adult Numeracy Network.

Put up a piece of newsprint (large gridded graph paper is best) with bedtimes across the horizontal axis and wake-up times along the vertical axis.

Invite students to plot their normal bedtimes and wake-up times. Teacher can model by plotting their own dot.

It might look something like this.

When everyone’s done, here are some discussion questions you might ask:

• What is the most common bedtime?
• What is the most common time people get up?
• If you were to go to bed an hour earlier, which way would your dot move?
• If you were to get up an hour earlier, which way would your dot move?
• Which dots represent people who got the most sleep?
• Which ones represent people who got the least sleep?
• In general, how much sleep do we get?
• What would be a good title for this graph?
• How could we label the two axes?

In the end, your scatterplot might look something like this.