Teacher Research at Zeerust Primary School 2016

TEACHER RESEARCH AT ZEERUST PRIMARY SCHOOL 2016:

Chance and Data

By Peter Farrell and Glenda Telford

Background

For the 2015-2018 Strategic Plan a key improvement strategy is to build the teacher capacity to identify and teach to each student’s point of learning. We have decided to do this through engaging in teacher research. In this, the second year of our strategic plan we turned our attention to numeracy, in particular chance and data.

There are three domains in maths and they are number and algebra, measurement and geometry, and chance and data representation and interpretation (CDRI). For the first two domains there exist on-demand tests which can be used in a diagnostic way. No such test exists for CDRI, and so we determined to direct our attention to this area.

Initial steps

Our first task was to create a spreadsheet where the expectations around CDRI at each grade level were recorded, and from this we could identify which of our students were achieving or not achieving these expectations. We used the national curriculum as our template as the Victorian Curriculum had not yet made its appearance.

From our audit it was clear that we were more than adequately addressing the data representation and interpretation component. What was missing was the work around chance and in particular, chance experiments.

From this point each teacher addressed the teaching and learning deficit in their own way. Causes and effects were discussed at the weekly curriculum meeting and some professional reading was undertaken at the fortnightly professional learning team meeting[1]

Senior class

Given the relatively advanced understanding of the senior class around probability the class needed to design, implement and analyse their own chanceexperiments. In particular they needed to understand the concept of the long run and that in some experiments the prior result did not influence the outcome of the next.

Experiments were modelled to the students with six sided and 10-sided dice and the combined data aggregated and presented to the class. From this modelling the students created their own chance experiments like coin tossing, dice rolling, bags of teddies of different colours. The students learnt to keep records, use tally marks and a variety of graphs to present their data and analyse it. The student work was commenced in February and completed by the end of Term 1.

Junior class

During the curriculum meeting with Peter the junior students had different learning needs than that of the senior students.

The work in the junior room started the study by finding out the degree of understanding of the terms used when dealing with the topic ‘chance and data.

Each student was asked “what they think the word ‘chance’ means or anything they link it too.

The junior students understanding of chance was linked to ‘having a go’ at something.

We then looked at the meaning of the word ‘chance’ in the dictionary.

The word ‘probability’ was included in the dictionary meaning. This raised further discussion. The dictionary was used again.

A class list of words that are linked to chance was compiled.

Will, won’t, might, certain, possible, impossible, likely, unlikely.

The foundation/grade1 students, using labels “will and will not” sorted pictures of events that could happen over that day.

The grade 2s sorted a list of occasions. Each occasion was talked about, where you think it should go and why.

The word impossiblecaused some confusion when a foundation student had difficulty differentiating between reality and imagination relating to events.

Probability is also a very abstract word that few students had any relationship with.

The use of concrete aides was useful to help develop an understanding.

The different coloured beads in a clear container and then closing their eyes to pluck out a bead was a valuable activity to demonstrate the meaning of both chance and probability. The reduction or addition of different coloured was a very good way to demonstrate the concepts.

There was more research on Data, collecting, representing, interpreting and analysing. This has to be kept simple and use relatable topics for years F-2.

During the activities used to demonstrate chance Tally recording was introduced although most had some idea about ‘Tally recording’ due to being used in their fitness test scoring in Physical Education. IIII III

An example was when each child shared their ‘flip a coin’ activity results.

This lead to the introduction of better ways to represent our results.

Different forms to represent the activity could be pictograph, column graph and pie graph.

As a whole class activity we compiled a pictograph to represent the results of the ‘flip a coin’ activity.

Could the results be reflected on a pie graph? What is a pie graph?

A simple pie graph was drawn on the whiteboard presenting the survey result from the12 people present. It was about the ownership of a pet dog. 8 owned a dog and 4 didn’t own a dog.

I drew the pie and coloured it accordingly. No reference was made with regards to percentage just the parts of the pie coloured in to represent the information.

Grade 2’s discussed relating the results of the ‘flip a coin activity’ andincluded these in a pie graph.

JM worked out if we flipped 10 heads and 10 tails that is half of twenty. This can be drawn as half a pie. 5 flipped meant one quarter of the pie and this area could be broken down further to numbers less than 5. Most grade 2’s Grade 2s were able to relate the 20 flips to equal 100% and 10 flips was 50%.

Grade F /1s used unfix cubes to represent their result of the 20 flips using one colour to represent heads and another to represents tails. This was then referred to as a bar graph.

On many occasions there is reason to find out information about different topics and present it.

We undertake purposeful investigations and the results “data” needs to be presented.

How can we collect data?

It was decided to conduct surveys across the students of the whole school.

Each student in grade F was asked to create a simple Yes/No that they could use to conduct a survey of the students.

Some examples of the questions: How many grade F pupils have short hair? Do any grade F pupils have a cat for a pet?

The rest of the class created more complex questions: What is the main part of your lunch today? What is the colour of your drink bottle you have at school today? What fruit did you bring to school today?

Students recorded answers by recording the answers at the bottom of a graph paper and marking corresponding squares up the paper.

Interpretation of data was the next stage after presenting data.

I chose to model some data collection, sort the data and represent the data in a bar graph.

I made observations from the data I collected. I can tell you how many people were involved in the survey. Whether there were more or less or the same numbers of the elements of the survey. Draw conclusions about the popularity of the elements of the survey.

Students then had to make observations from the data they had collected relating to their question.

All students were able to provide a statement to interpret the data.

Grade 2s and SB discussed ways to interpret the data they had collected where more than a yes/no question was surveyed. Using 2cm square graph paper drew up a bar graph to represent their data and interpreted their data.

As a group we discussed naming the graphs and labelling the axis but this was not an expectation.

The unit was conducted over a four week period, finishing at the end of term 4.

What was learnt

Initially, we were looking to provide a structure for the teaching and assessment of CDRI. This structure had been provided for in the other mathematical domains which allowed for benchmarking and identification of learning requirements. Our spreadsheet allowed us to do this.

This was a move-testing experiment where the absence of particular teaching was made good.

[1]Glenda was on long service leave for the first five weeks of Term 2.