100 Students Project: Analyzing Survey Results

See the Do Now video in my strategy folder to see my beginning of class routines.  Often, I create do nows that have problems that connect to the task that students will be working on that day.  I want student to start thinking about how they are going to use the raw data and figure out how to present it in the context that our school is made up of 100 students.  Some students may create and simplify a ratio to say that 25 out of 100 people have 4 or more siblings.  Other students may say that 25% of the people have 4 or more siblings.

I ask students to raise their hand and share one of their observations or questions.  We go back and forth so that students who conducted the survey can share about their experience and the other students can ask their questions.  

Note:

• I provide each student with a calculator for the rest of the class period.  I want students focusing on figuring out how to use the data rather than calculating.

I give students a few minutes to work on the problem independently with their calculators.  I am interested to see how students deal with numbers that have many decimal places.  Do students round to the nearest person?  Do they use their number sense to check their answer?  Do they notice that since the survey is out of 96 people the numerator of their fraction is pretty close to the number of people out of 100?  If students struggle, I have them return to the do now and see what connections they can make.

We come back together as a class and share out ideas.  I ask students how they should round their data?  What did the 100 People video do?  I want students to realize that it will be clearer to their audience if they round their numbers to the nearest person.

Then I ask students what data they would present and why.  Students participate in a Think Pair Share.  I call on students to share out their answers.  I want them to realize that it would be overwhelming to present all of the data.  The challenging task students have is to determine which data they think is the most significant and how they are going to present the data.

Last, I ask students how they would present this data.  I am interested to hear students’ ideas about how to communicate the data with words and visuals.  For instance, a student may group 3 siblings, 4 siblings, and 5 or more siblings into one statistic: 23 people have 3 or more siblings.  

Notes:

• For the previous lesson, I put students into groups of 3-4 students.  Each group will present on the data from 2-3 survey questions.
• Before this lesson I create a word doc that has the raw data of each question.  Each group will get copies of the data for their questions.
• Before this lesson, I read over groups’ brainstorming sheets from the previous lesson.  I make sure I have the materials they will need to carry out their presentation ideas.

Students move into groups.  I pass out the sheets with the raw question data to each group.  I also pass out a Group Work Rubric to each group.  Students are engaging with MP2: Reason abstractly and quantitatively, MP3: Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others, MP5: Use appropriate tools strategically, and MP6: Attend to precision.  As students work, I walk around to monitor student progress and behavior. 

Questions I ask groups:

• How did you calculate that data?
• How can you prove that it is accurate?
• Which pieces of data are you going to use in your presentation?  Why?
• How are you going to present your data?  Why?
• Do you have all the materials you need?

I want students to think about what stands out in the data for them.  What do you think other students would be interested to find out?  I also want students to be able to justify why their group makes the decisions it makes.  

See the video 100 Students Concept Map.  Also I will spend the last few minutes giving students the opportunity to record their questions on post-its and put them on the 100 Students Project Parking Lot Poster.