Eventmath/Lesson plans/White House chart exaggerates economic growth

Lesson plan overview
Lesson plan overview
Title	White House chart exaggerates economic growth
Assumed knowledge	Students must know how to look at a graph.
Activities	Students will examine the graph, discuss in groups, and then recreate a more accurate version.
Class time	00-15 minutes
Source
	"We just learned that President Biden's first year in office was the strongest year for economic growth since 1984". Twitter. 2022-01-27. {{cite web}}: \|archive-date= requires \|archive-url= (help)
	Want more lesson plans? Browse
	v; t; e;

Please help develop this lesson plan!

This lesson plan is currently in draft status.
Since this is a wiki page, anyone can help make it better! If you don't know how, check out the Editing FAQ.
If you like, you can check out more Eventmath lesson plans.

Activities

The main goal of this activity is to have students examine the Tweet and chart individually, then to discuss in small groups before creating a new, more accurate version of the chart. Then, the instructor can lead a discussion where groups share what they've made and then everyone looks at the follow-up correction from the White House Twitter account: "This is y you proofread."

Initial discussion

Provide each student with a printout of the original Tweet and chart, or share it on a big screen. (It's important to have the full context with the Tweet itself, not just the chart.) Ask students to write down responses to some quick questions, such as:

The right side of the chart says "2021 5.7%." What does this mean?
Look at the years 2007, 2008, and 2009 on the chart. What do the heights of those bars tell us? What happened in the world that may explain this?
Look at the year 2018. How tall is that bar? What if it were *twice as tall*? Where would that be on the chart? Does anything about that look funny to you?
Now, consider the written text of the Tweet. What is the main *claim* the White House is making? Does the chart support that claim, or would you need more information to verify it?
Finally, consider the title of the chart. Does it match the information actually shown in the chart? Does it match the claim made in the Tweet?

Group activity

Form students into groups of 2 or 3 and give them a couple minutes to discuss their responses to the quick questions above. Then, ask each group to share with the class one insightful comment or question from their group discussion. Eventually, segue the discussion into the next activity by asking, "What *should* this chart have looked like? How could we make it more accurate? And when we do that, how might our impression of the information change?"

Assignments

You're welcome to suggest exercises, activities, assignments, or projects based on the material of this lesson.

Resources

(Include these sections at your discretion, keeping in mind that you and others can always edit and add more to these sections later.)

Background

You're welcome to share links to openly-accessible content (e.g. from Khan Academy, YouTube, Wikiversity, etc.) about domain knowledge or math skills students should have. Likewise, you may wish to include contextual information for the instructor.

Explorations

You're welcome to share references for additional learning and exploration, such as links to other articles, videos, spreadsheets, or computer code. When an open-access substitute is unavailable, links to paywalled sites are acceptable in this section.

Feedback

Have you found this lesson plan helpful? Tell us about it!

Just click Endorse below to open up an editor and type your comments. When you're ready, they'll appear at the bottom of this section to help other educators looking for good lesson plans.

(Alternatively, if you see a way to improve this lesson plan, be bold and make an edit! You're also welcome to discuss the lesson plan or provide constructive feedback on its Discussion page.)