Fabulous flu graphic in yesterday's Times

This caught my eye yesterday (someone was reading it at the newspaper stand in Waitrose, Abingdon, and it looked so interesting I just had to buy the paper).

The good news is it is also available as a PDF file from the Times web site where you can also read the related report: 'Britain is braced for mass school closures in the autumn'.

It's ideal for displaying on an interactive whiteboard and also prints out very clearly onto an A4 sheet. There's so much to absorb that it's hard to know where to look first...

but remember the great thing about PDF files is that you can zoom into particular bits. Once you have got the area you want to see lined up in the window (see screenshot, below left) you can print just the 'current view' onto an A4 sheet to make an instant worksheet (see screenshot of the Adobe Acrobat print dialogue box below right - you can click on this screen shot to zoom in if needed).



















Unfortunately a) it's almost the end of term and b) I'm teaching E1-2 at the moment so I don't think I'm going to get a chance to use the graphic in class. BUT if you do and want to share your ideas please leave a blog comment or email me via http://www.skillsworkshop.org/

Here's just a few starter ideas (for L1-L2) using the enlarged part of the graphic shown above:

Pictograms - look at the pictogram and read the surrounding text.

1. How many doses of flu vaccine does each syringe represent?
2. Why are there 12 syringes in the pictogram?
3. Explain why there are only 10 anti-viral drug icons.

For more ideas on using newspaper graphics in numeracy classes have a look at my Guardian Eyewitness - numeracy resource for film lovers post of last July.