I believe the data analysis is what makes or breaks this activity. If students understand the data, how to process it, and what it means, the activity can be a huge success. If not, students may be walking away simply thinking that they got to do a pretty fun activity with measuring tapes in your classroom. I suggest letting students run each of the sampling techniques to collect the data and then walking them through the process of analyzing the data (through modeling) before moving on to the next sampling technique. Make sure to address why you are doing what you are doing for each step of the data analysis (for instance, why does converting the data to percentages or averages make sense?) as well as addressing the MEANING of the ultimate output of the data processing. Then, at the end of the lesson when students are asked to choose which technique most accurately represented the environment, they will have some basis and evidence for addressing the question.
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Exploring Our Fluid Earth, a product of the Curriculum Research & Development Group (CRDG), College of Education. University of Hawaii, 2011. This document may be freely reproduced and distributed for non-profit educational purposes.
Mon, 05/13/2013 - 20:48
I agree with you. We were able to create graphs in small groups and then combined the data as a class. We created bar graphs and pie charts as a means to analyze the data and then went back to our site to see if the graphs and charts we created accurately expressed what was exhibited.