Spreadsheet - Suncoast Graph and Charts - Teacher Tips

After completing the Suncoast tasks, students should understand the concept and potential of a multi-sheet workbook, and feel comfortable creating various graphic representations of data.  The graph and chart tasks may be challenging, but may also seem the most "fun" to students, if they follow directions and explore program options with open minds. 

Consult your T: Drive to see the charts in the final workbook. The file is named SuncoastFinal.xls

Below are some instructions to help you demonstrate options to students.

Suggestions:

• Display hard copies of bar graph and pie charts, to help students visualize the outcome.
• Encourage students to experiment with colors and fonts for a unique appearance in their graphs and charts.  This might also assure that each is doing his/her own work.
• Insist that the graphics be readable and in balance with other aspects of the page.

Troubleshooting:

The spreadsheet introduction explains how to use Move or Copy Sheet, and most of the assignments reinforce this. 

• When students start experimenting with their data and charts, encourage them to work from a copy, for the safety of their initial work. 
• Extra worksheets can easily be deleted later, and sheet tabs are easy to rename.

The pie chart assignment will be hardest for students who haven't worked with charts before.  Aspects that might challenge them:

• When the 2nd chart is placed As object in the sheet, it will exactly cover the first pie chart.  Just click in the chart and drag it off the top of the first one.
• Printing embedded charts can be confusing.  If you want to print the whole page with the embedded charts, a cell on that page must be selected before printing.  If a chart is selected, then that chart will be printed as one page.  The best way to deal with this is to ALWAYS look at Print Preview before pressing the print button.  What you see is what you'll print.

Demonstrate how chart features can be selected and changed:

• To begin, make a copy of the sheet for your demonstration--experiment on the copy
  • Click to select an area of a chart (a click in the pie is illustrated)
  • Click again to select an individual pie section (or bar in a bar chart)
  • In the third illustration, a different slice--the largest--is selected:
                         

   

• Right click in any area of a chart or graph for a menu of options to change that area:

• The data group is called "data series" and individual sections are "data points"

• If you format the Data Series in a pie chart, all of the sections will be the same:

• If you format a Data Point in a chart, that section will be unique; each section will need formatting:

• Important: with two pie charts on one sheet, the pie sections that represent dollar amounts must look the same or the comparison is not effective.

• There are almost no limits to the variety of effects possible by combining the options available with the "Fill Effects" button.  Encourage students to explore all of the tabs and try many possibilities.

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