Statistics: Climb, slide or swing?
View Sequence overviewSurveys are a way to collect data.
Each group
A4 paper
Task
Revise: We are working out what we would have in a playground where everyone in our class can have fun. We each designed a playground that was fun and fair.
Invite students to share what they included in their design. Record each piece of playground equipment or activity on the board.
Ask: We all have so many different things to do! How can we decide what we want to have in our class playground?
Discuss what students do or how they might move on the various equipment in the designs. Some examples might include: climb, slide, swing, spin, up and down, run, quiet time, crawl, or hang. Focusing on movement allows students to categorise the equipment. Through the sequence, we refer to these ways of moving as 'playground activities’.
Categorise each piece of playground equipment listed on the board according to its activity type. Make a record of this to refer to throughout this sequence.
Remind: We have each designed a playground based on what we think people enjoy doing. Let's collect some data about what activities we would all like to have in the playground, to make sure that everyone can have fun.
Divide the students into pairs and provide each pair with A4 paper. Explain that they will find out each student’s favourite activity to do in the playground.
Observe what students do and look to see if any pairs recognise the need to keep track of student responses in some way. You might seed the idea of recording to keep track of responses with some students. Also note whether students are recording the frequency of responses for each activity. In the early years, students often don’t pay attention to frequency, so once one student chooses an activity, no other student response for that activity may be recorded.
Checkpoint—Surveying our class
Conduct a class Checkpoint discussion. Remind students that we are answering the question What would we have in a playground where everyone in our class can have fun?, and to do this we need to make sure we do two things:
- Survey every student in the class exactly once.
- Record each student’s response.
Ask some students to share their recording. Select students who have used some kind of recording to track responses, such as:
- recording students’ names and then their preferred activity.
- keeping a list of activities with tallies.
- writing a narrative, e.g. “Jai likes the swing the best and kicking a ball.”
Discuss the benefits of these strategies.
Seeding ideas followed by a Checkpoint
Our goal is for students to be active mathematical sense-makers who are learning to work like mathematicians. This means that the teacher needs to be responsive to students’ thinking and working. But what if students’ thinking and working is not heading in the right direction?
“Seeding” is a tool that teachers can use to guide and direct students’ thinking and working while maintaining them as authors of their learning. “Seeding” aims to develop students’ nascent ideas.
There are two kinds of seeding that you can use with your students:
Looking for sprouts—As you observe your class in action, you may notice some students who are beginning to work towards the lesson’s learning goal. By asking these students to share their thinking and working with the class, you can “sprout” the thinking and working of others in the class.
Planting seeds—You can plant “seeds” or ideas keep things moving. Only do this when students are unable to get going themselves. In this instance, you can “seed” by asking questions which steer students to think about how they can organise their survey to be able to record student responses.
Seed ideas with students and then allow them to work on and grow these ideas so that they become their own. Use a class Checkpoint [hyperlink to Checkpoint in ped tools] so students can share these ideas with the wider class.
Our goal is for students to be active mathematical sense-makers who are learning to work like mathematicians. This means that the teacher needs to be responsive to students’ thinking and working. But what if students’ thinking and working is not heading in the right direction?
“Seeding” is a tool that teachers can use to guide and direct students’ thinking and working while maintaining them as authors of their learning. “Seeding” aims to develop students’ nascent ideas.
There are two kinds of seeding that you can use with your students:
Looking for sprouts—As you observe your class in action, you may notice some students who are beginning to work towards the lesson’s learning goal. By asking these students to share their thinking and working with the class, you can “sprout” the thinking and working of others in the class.
Planting seeds—You can plant “seeds” or ideas keep things moving. Only do this when students are unable to get going themselves. In this instance, you can “seed” by asking questions which steer students to think about how they can organise their survey to be able to record student responses.
Seed ideas with students and then allow them to work on and grow these ideas so that they become their own. Use a class Checkpoint [hyperlink to Checkpoint in ped tools] so students can share these ideas with the wider class.
Come to consensus on one strategy that keeps track of who has been asked and each person’s response. For example, students might decide to write each activity on the board, and then take turns to add a tally mark next to their favourite activity.
Conduct the survey as a class using the strategy selected by students.
Save the survey data for use in the following lessons.
Using a survey to collect data
In the primary years, surveys are a commonly used collection method. The data you collect from a survey is determined by the questions that you ask.
In this sequence, students might ask: What is your favourite thing to do in a playground? A survey question like this can elicit many different responses, which might make it difficult to analyse the data. Creating categories of popular playground activities means that we can pose a more restricted survey question, like: Do you prefer to climb, slide or swing in the playground? This question specifically asks respondents to choose one of three options, which means the data will be easier to manage and analyse. The downside to this question is that it restricts respondents’ choices, so for someone who prefers spinning, their response will not indicate their favourite thing to do in the playground.
In the primary years, surveys are a commonly used collection method. The data you collect from a survey is determined by the questions that you ask.
In this sequence, students might ask: What is your favourite thing to do in a playground? A survey question like this can elicit many different responses, which might make it difficult to analyse the data. Creating categories of popular playground activities means that we can pose a more restricted survey question, like: Do you prefer to climb, slide or swing in the playground? This question specifically asks respondents to choose one of three options, which means the data will be easier to manage and analyse. The downside to this question is that it restricts respondents’ choices, so for someone who prefers spinning, their response will not indicate their favourite thing to do in the playground.