Differentiation Graphing Fun in First Grade

My boyfriend is a high school math teacher, who teaches Algebra II and Math Models [which I think is a Texas thing, it's basically remedial Algebra I and Geometry combined] did a project with his high schoolers last week using skittles to find probability, and since I'm sort of teaching the same thing, just the First Grade version of it, I decided to make a simple graphing project out of it since we're studying different types of graphs in math this week.

First, I differeniated it. I decided that my higher on-level students and my above level students can make pictographs because they're a bit more challenging, and my lower on-level students and below level students can make bar-graphs.

To differentiate my students without letting them know, I wrote either Bar Graph or Pictograph on an index card:

I put the Bar Graphs on the top of the pile and picture graphs on the bottom of the pile, so I can easily distribute them to my students without them noticing how I'm doing it since my students sit in heterogeneous groups, as it is.

Each student will get a fun-size bag of skittles.

Cheaply purchased at Target, my favorite store in the entire world.

The students will divide the candy by color. Then they will graph the candy. The lower students will make a bar graph, and the higher students will make a pictograph, and then the students will either write the word Greatest or Least on the appropriate column, or they will write a sentence depicting that same information.

So, it's something pretty simple, but something I think my students will have a lot of fun doing, plus they get to eat the candy when they are finished, so I don't think they'll complain much :) Nothing like using real-world skills to make graphs :) especially when it involves candy.