Putting It All Together: Your Communication Action Plan

Section Putting It All Together: Your Communication Action Plan

You’ve explored strategies for helping students create effective visualizations, craft compelling data stories, and adapt their communication for different audiences. It’s important to now link your new knowledge back to the Visualization and Communication learning progressions for your grade band. Explore those where you can see all of Strand E

¹²

here

. Now let’s create a practical plan for building these communication skills in your classroom.

🔗

Exploration 35. Choose Your Communication Implementation Strategy.

Consider which approach would work best for developing students’ communication skills:

🔗

Option 1: Gallery Walks and Peer Feedback - Regularly have students post their visualizations and get structured feedback from classmates about clarity and effectiveness.

🔗

Option 2: Authentic Audience Projects - Connect with real audiences (other classes, parents, community members) who need to understand students’ data findings.

🔗

Option 3: Media Analysis and Creation - Have students analyze data communication in news, social media, and advertising, then create their own examples.

🔗

Option 4: Multi-Format Communication - Have students present the same findings in multiple formats (poster, presentation, infographic, letter to the editor) to practice adaptation.

🔗

Checkpoint 81.

What’s the most important principle to remember when teaching students to communicate with data?

🔗

Hint.

Think about the fundamental purpose of all communication with data.

🔗

Solution.

All effective data communication starts with empathy for the audience. Students should learn to ask: “What does my audience need to know? How can I help them understand? What will make this meaningful to them?” rather than “How can I show everything I learned?” This audience-first mindset leads to clearer, more impactful communication.

🔗

Checkpoint 82. My Data Communication Action Plan.

Create your specific plan for implementing communication skills in your classroom.

🔗

(a)

Which implementation strategy feels most realistic for you to try consistently over the next month? Why?

🔗

(b)

What’s one specific way you could have students practice the data story structure this week with content from your curriculum?

🔗

(c)

How will you help students develop audience awareness? What questions will you have them ask about their intended audience?

🔗

(d)

What tools are available to you for helping students create and share visualizations? How will you introduce these gradually?

🔗

Remember: The goal is helping students become effective communicators who can make data accessible and meaningful to others, not creating perfect graphics or presentations.

🔗

The Harvard Business Review shows us how to tell stories with data in three easy steps.

🔗

Checkpoint 83.

Before moving to the implementation modules, reflect: What communication skills do you think will be most valuable for your students beyond the classroom? How can you help them see data communication as a tool for understanding and improving their world?

🔗

Prev Top Next