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Problem Solving March 2002 (v 26.3)
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Data Collection Lessons GRADES K–2On page 48 of this ComMuniCator
you will find an activity titled “Mini-Data Collection Lessons.” We are
interested in how your students respond to this activity and/or any
adaptations you found particularly useful in helping your children
understand the concepts of data collection and analysis. Send us
samples of your students’ work, as well as reactions and/or comments.
Average Letters Per Word GRADES 3–5Have
students survey their textbook, a current individual reading book, and
a newspaper. They then create a table showing word length by number of
letters. Each student finds the average word length for each type of
publication for about a paragraph length of text.- 3rd Grade:
Students guess which source will have longer word averages and which
will have shorter averages before beginning the activity. After the
activity, they compare their guesses with the actual word averages.
- 4th grade:
Students determine what conclusions can be drawn from the findings. Are
poems, short stories, or other sources the same or different?
- 5th grade:
In addition to the above activities, students should try to explain
what might cause the difference(s) between the publications.
Most Popular Genre GRADES 6–8Have
students survey the reading material they find in their lives (books,
newspapers, magazines), categorize them by genre, and create a table
showing the results. Possible categories are:
Fiction- traditional literature
- fantasy
- science
- realistic
- historical
Nonfiction- informational
- biography
- autobiography
- memoir
Students then compare their lists with
other students and their school library. Is there any category missing?
What is the mode of the distribution? What would cause the difference
in the findings?
Create a Data Set GRADES 9–12 Ask your students to
create a set of data that has a mean of 6 and a standard deviation of
2. They should explain how they approached the problem and how they
arrived at their solutions. Encourage students to formulate a general
solution that would work for any given mean and standard deviation.
Return to Student Problem Soving Main Page.
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This Page was last updated: Saturday, March 6, 2004 at 11:38:24 AM
This page was originally posted: 6/30/2002; 10:52:43 PM.
Copyright 2008 cmcmath
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