1. 11/22/2010 ©Evergreen Public Schools 2010 1 Presidential Approval Teacher Notes Supplies: Wall Street Journal graphs for Presidential Approval for past Presidents Notes: Vocabulary: This is the launch for Unit 5. Part One Past Presidents - Students look at job approval graphs for past presidents to gain some perspective for the data that is presented about President Obama’s first two years in office. The main points to bring out are that Job Approval fluctuates with events and that Job Approval is usually lower a year after a president takes office. The example that follows uses job approval percentages gathered from the Gallup Company. Gallup Company

2. ©Evergreen Public Schools 2010 2 LaunchLaunch Here are the approval ratings for President Obama for his first 9 months in office. If you were his advisor, what would you tell him about the data?

3. ©Evergreen Public Schools 2010 3 Learning Target In this unit, you will use data to draw conclusions.

4. ©Evergreen Public Schools 2010 4 Your group has a graph of Presidential Job Approval Polling collected by the Gallup company Gallup company 1. Study the graph together. 2. Discuss what the graph might be communicating.

5. ©Evergreen Public Schools 2010 5 As a group discuss and come to agreement on answers for the following questions: I. What do the scales on the axes represent? II. What do you know about the President shown? Support your answers with information from the graph. III.What are some reasons why Gallup would gather this information? IV. Describe what happened to the Job Approval rating during the President’s first two years in office.

6. ©Evergreen Public Schools 2010 6 Debrief Go to this website to see President Obama’s current approval rating and graph of his approval ratingswebsite If you were the President’s advisor, what would you tell him about the data?