This year at many parent conferences, parents have discussed with me the time their children should go to bed and how much sleep children should typically be getting a night in order to be at their best at school the next day. With parent-teacher conferences coming up, I would like to be able to answer parents' questions about fourth and fifth graders' sleeping habits. Please conduct a survey to help me become more informed about this topic. I want you to keep track of the work that you are doing as you do it! Tell me how you decided on a question, how you decided the way you were going to collect your data, what changes you make along the way, and represent your data so that the class can analyze it too. Then I will need you to write a formal analysis of your data, including what is important about the data and what it means to you. You should also make recommendations to parents who are having a hard time deciding when their children need to go to bed. Thanks for your help!
Our "Math Words of the Week" that we were studying included mode, mean and median. After studying these words and understanding their differences and similarities, I provided students with the following task to assess their ability to use these words appropriately in a real-life context. This task enabled me to assess where students stand in their understanding of mode, mean and median so I could plan future instruction. It also showed students that they could structure an investigation to find answers to every-day questions. This activity can lead to a great discussion of how data can be manipulated to prove different points of views and perspectives. Most students chose to create a formal survey, collect and organize their data and make conclusions. This was an authentic learning experience for students in creating meaningful and useful surveys. Some students became quite frustrated when the results of their survey did not fit the format they expected. For instance, some students responded that their bedtime was a range between 8:00-10:00, while others stated 8:30. Students then had to figure out how they were going to deal with these discrepancies. Some students were obviously "untruthful" about their bedtimes and that added another dimension to the data analysis. Obtaining the typical bedtime was not the only investigation students performed. They also investigated whether or not students agreed with their bedtimes and whether bedtimes varied from weekends to weeknights. 2-3 hours This study would be interesting to accompany a study of other topics students feel are "not fair". For instance allowances, time spent on chores, time spent on homework, etc. Definitions: Mean or Average - adding all the information together and dividing by the number of pieces of data. Median - arranging all of the data in order and determining the middle piece of each data. Mode - the most common. When grading my students, I used the following format:
Understanding of the problem and evidence of approach and strategy: tally, scratch work, narration describing what was done and why. (10 pts) Representation (50 pts)
Use of math language (20 pts) Conclusion, recommendation, I noticed statements (20 pts)
- Ditto masters
- Graph paper
- Markers
- Stencils
- Calculators
Solutions will vary depending upon what students decide to research.
Student has limited awareness of the problem: S/hedoes not understand the goal is to collect and analyze data about which to draw a conclusion. Student has not organized data in a way that would lead to a mathematically relevant conclusion.
Student shows some understanding of the problem, but has a random or weak strategy. Student collects relevant data, but makes an incorrect or incomplete mathematically relevant conclusion.
Student understands the problem and obtains a correct solution. Student collects relevant data and makes a correct and complete mathematically relevant conclusion.
Student creates multiple solutions, looks at the problem in a more complex manner, makes a correct and complete mathematically relevant conclusion and considers more than one dimension (time and day or bedtime and wake-up time).
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