Day 9, 10, 11 (and maybe 12?)

Due to the lack of attendance, (and my not being here resulting in little work actually getting done!), I have booked some days in the lab to finish their surveys and to finish their research for the Statistical Literacy project. Students finally did work on their surveys and I was able to give constant feedback. It worked out well. I printed and photocopied the surveys and students had them filled out. Some work is getting done!

Before I decide whether I need four days in the lab, we will see how today and tomorrow go. Students are working well on their surveys and the graphs for their surveys.

Day 8 - Causal Relations vs Correlation

After a weekend and after having been gone for 2 days, my students needed a refresher! So we spent some time going over 1-var vs. 2-var and the analyses for both. We then started in on the difference between cause and effect, and correlation:

Students understood this very well. They struggled at times determining the common variable that affects two other variables. We did the examples together and a few of the questions on page 2 together. The rest they did on their own. They had a bit more practice:

The first sheet of this gets at how intuition isn't always correct. The last sheet is more practice with the correlation coefficient. Hopefully at the end of this, they will have a better understanding of statistics!!

Day 6 & 7 - Lab Days (Survey Assignment and Statistical Literacy)

I was away last week for two days because of the Provincial OAME conference. I learned all about how to run an e-conference! Yay! (That's good as I have to help run it next year.... ahem.)

While I was away, attendance was *poor*. However, for the students who were present:

Thursday they worked on their surveys and got them mostly done. Because I was using Google Drive and Google Docs, I was able to make comments and edit them as they came in. Ha! I bet they were not expecting that!!

Friday, students worked on a Statistical Literacy Assignment:

Again, I had poor attendance. The students who were there, the supply teacher told me that they found their articles but did little else. So the next week, we have some lab days to tie up some of these loose ends.

The modification I am making to the above assignment is that instead of presenting to the class, students will be presenting using Explain Everything on the iPads.

Day 5 - One and Two Variable Analysis

Students are working on their surveys, but once they finish and administer their surveys, students have to analyze the results. We have discussed a little bit but it has been a bit scattered so today we pulled things together and discussed it as a whole. We made connections to try to consolidate understanding of all the different terms. (For example, the standard deviation tells us how meaningful the "mean" value actually is - how closely packed the data is; this is similar to the correlation coefficient when doing a linear regression.)

I am starting to have problems with attendance. Students aren't really skipping, but they are away a lot for sports, class trips, camp etc. This means that I may teach a lesson but have to re-teach it later. I thought this was a really good one - and it was for the students who were there. However, I had to go over all this again the next week. Anyway, the students did do some work to practice:

Day 4 - Percentiles and Indices

Students have learned a great deal about mean, median and mode. Today we expanded on their ability to analyze 1-Variable statistics by looking at percentiles, and quartiles (measures of spread) and also by looking at indices.

I started the class by spending time recalling what they already knew about mean, median and mode as well as when they might use these tools. Something I have learned over my years of teaching is that students can easily find the mean or the median or the mode, but have no idea when it might be useful to do so. I think that this is just as important, so we spent some time discussing that. I also spent time asking them to recall the difference between discrete and continuous data, as well as the kind of graphs that would be most appropriate for each. We then got into the above lesson and it went very smoothly. Students then had to complete the attached practice work.

Day 3 - Sneaky Graphs

We are working on statistical literacy in this cycle so we looked at how graphs can be misleading today. We worked through the questions about the first graph together and students worked through the rest on their own.

Students did well on this activity. Their critical thinking with respect to graphs and diagrams is pretty good!

Day 2 - Survey Assignment

Today students are designing a survey to survey the class with. It is a small class so they may survey other classes as well. We talked again about what makes a good survey. They need 5 graphs, so we talked about how many questions that will be.

I will be in Kingston at the OAME conference later this week and so students will have another lab day to do analysis. Next time I think I might give an exemplar and maybe give some topic ideas. It was so wide open, students had some trouble deciding what to survey about and how to ask questions so that they might have more than one type of graph.