Before break we touched a little on these topics with the intent to dive in a little deeper once we come back. I feel like students got the basics down and could calculate mean, median, mode, range, and make a box plot etc. But I don't think they really get the why part. There are two lessons I know that I am going to try with them next week that I'm really looking forward to.
The first is from the Mathematics Assessment Project http://map.mathshell.org/materials/lessons.php?taskid=486&subpage=concept
I have done these types of lessons before and the students really enjoy them. I really like the activity where they match their cards and then send out a group member to check other groups work. I have to decide if I will try to fit this in one class period (50 min) or two.
The second is from Mathalicious which is one of the best web resources I ever found. The tasks are so good and interesting and it is just set up so well. Here is the task I'm going to use: Wealth of Nations This is based off a video I've seen before and it is mind blowing. I really hope that my students see what a big deal this is and also make the connections between the spread of data and what that means in real life.
How are you seeing students conceptual understanding change?
ReplyDeleteone thing I notice is that my students are used to learning "tricks" unfortunately. It has been a hard shift to get them to understand I want them to know the whys of these tricks not just the tricks themselves. I feel like that shift is starting to happen. As we approach the end of the year and skills are starting to circulate back in, I feel that students are retaining what they learned a lot better than in the past.
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