If you haven't figured out from my previous blog posts, I am a big fan of College Preparatory Math, or CPM. It has some really great lessons and has cooperative teamwork opportunities built in to many of the lessons. My colleague, friend, and mentor Carrie Wong has continued to remind me though that I'm not teaching a curriculum, I'm teaching the Common Core standards. As I've taught more and more lessons, I've found ones that I've liked and didn't like. One I didn't like was a lesson on relative frequency tables that dealt with whether corn grew better in sandy soil or clay soil. Myself and my students couldn't get into it or relate to it.
In Graham Fletcher's NCTM Shadowcon talk one of his calls to action was to pick a standard you teach, and learn more about it. The standard chose was CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.8.SP.A.4
Understand that patterns of association can also be seen in bivariate categorical data by displaying frequencies and relative frequencies in a two-way table. I also consulted the Progressions documents where I was reminded that MAD or Mean Absolute Deviation is a 6th grade standard that I doubt any of my students are familiar with. I possibly missed an opportunity to teach this when representing class averages of paper airplane throws.
I searched on Illustrative Mathematics for a task and found a suitable one. My hook for the lesson was my hypothesis: I grandly pronounced that "if you play a musical instrument, I believe you are more likely to also play a sport." I asked students how we could answer this question. They replied that we should survey every student. So, I had students answer the questions in a certain order and check off yes or no for each question on a class roster on a spread sheet (example and more details).
I asked students if we could see if my hypothesis was correct. They thought it was hard to tell, and I agreed. This created a need for an organized way to analyze the data. That's where the frequency table serves its purpose. I created a Google drawing template that you could use with your class, that has some of the academic vocabulary also. To extend this lesson, it's possible make the connection between this display and a Venn diagram display.
After analyzing the class data, have students come up with their own hypothesis that could be answered by asking two questions with yes or no answers. I believe this raises the Depth of Knowledge (DOK) level of the task by having students create their own as well as motivation because they have the freedom to create their own survey. After the teacher approves it, give the students time to survey each other.
Students came up with the following hypotheses:
- if you play video games will most likely wear eyeglasses
- if you hate math probably hate school (eek!)
- if you have an iPhone also probably have Snapchat
- if you play video games you probably go to sleep after midnight
- if you don't have a pet you want a pet
I believe this lesson could still be improved with a rubric outlining how the final poster would be scored, which would help students fulfill the requirements.
In conclusion, students are motivated when a math concept can be tied to their personal interests. This is also evident in my first blog where students love hearing about their commonalities and differences with the mystery student activity, in my second blog when students are given the chance to analyze each others work giving peer feedback, and in my third blog guiding students to work cooperatively with each other with creative study team strategies.
If you have suggestions on how to improve this particular lesson, or have a lesson you have created or tweaked to motivate your students please share it.
