Super Heroes and Evil Villains

Pie graphs and bar graphs:  Wow, what a boring topic.  If your teaching a high school stats class the topic of pie graphs and bar graphs (categorical data) can be pretty boring and dull.  So how can you liven things up a bit.  Well, one way to make boring topics more interesting for your students is to give them ownership of the topic in some way.

I decided to have all my students create their own Super Hero or Super Villain.  The results were quite entertaining.  I learned all about Heroes like The Jet, whose only weakness is being ticklish, and The Sock Monkey who is always battling The Killer Lamp.  One of my favorites was Forest Man, who roams the Earth looking for The Monster Truck who killed his mother.

I have to admit that part
of my inspiration for this
project was Conan O'Brien
as, The Flaming C.

Let's not forget the villains.  I was introduced to villains like "The Twixter", who has the ability to "candify" things and is always on the run from "The Dentist".  Then there was Turtleman, the mortal enemy of Mrs. Magnificent.  Turtleman has the ability to make everyone late and Mrs. Magnificent hates it when people are late.

My students got really creative with their hero/villain and their super powers.(By the way, the most popular super powers were flight, invisibility, and the power to steal other powers.)  It made a pretty boring topic, fun.

As teachers, we face the challenge of "entertaining" our students and battling that with the Internet, apps, movies, and TV.  Our greatest asset in the battle for our students' attention, is our students themselves.  I was pleased with this activity and the ownership that my students took with their creations.

The only part of the project that was unexpected was how little my students knew about using Excel.  I planned one 72 minute class period for students to create their displays, but it turned into two full class periods.

You can get instructions for the project here.  It you try it, please let me know your thoughts about the activity/project.