MATERIALS: paper, pencils
The school cafeteria informs the school that they will be reducing the kinds of chips they sell from six different flavours to three flavours. The cafeteria has asked the Grade Five class for their input on what flavours should remain. Invite the students to have a discussion about ways they could help the cafeteria with this decision. Should they pick their favourite flavours? Or should they survey the whole school? What would be the fairest way to go about this? This should lead to students conducting a survey of all the classes and recording data in a tally table under headings like ketchup, barbecue, regular, Doritos, dill pickle, and salt and vinegar. Ask students to combine data from the classes. Ask students to display this data in two different ways. (individual classes, overall school numbers for each flavour, etc.) What conclusions can we make after looking at these graphs? What is the probability that another school would have the same preferences in chips?
EXTENSIONS:
Discuss why the cafeteria would be cutting back on the
flavours of chips available for sale?
How might the cafeteria decide on what flavours to keep
if they had not asked the Grade Five class for help? (they might just pick
the 3 top sellers of the 6).
Discuss whether they would find the same results if they
were to have only surveyed a few students in each of the grades? (discuss
sampling).
OUTCOMES:
F2: use pictographs and bar graphs to display and
interpret data
F7: explore relevant issues for which data collection
assists in reaching conclusions
MATERIALS: two-coloured counters (or coins), paper, pencils
Have groups of three play the following game using two 2-coloured counters (or coins). The two counters are tossed. Player 1 gets a point if both counters come up red. Player 2 gets a point if both counters come up yellow, and Player 3 gets one point if one counter comes up red and one comes up yellow. The first to reach 10 points wins. After the students play the game, have them list the possible outcomes and discuss if the game is fair. If they feel it is not fair, how could they revise the scoring to make it fair?
OUTCOMES:
G1: conduct simple experiments to determine probabilities
* Adapted from: Interactions: Grade
5 (1994). Toronto: Ginn Publishing Canada Inc.
Ask students to gather information about the number of phone calls that come into their home over the course of 5 days. Groups of students could collect their data and create stem-and-leaf plots. They should draw conclusions from the information gathered? What can we conclude from examining this data? Why is a stem-and-leaf diagram a good way to display data? (it preserves the original data).
OUTCOMES:
F5: group data appropriately and use stem and leaf
plots to describe the data
* taken from: Atlantic Canada Mathematics Curriculum
Guide, Grade 5, p.5-99
MATERIALS: Internet-ready computers, paper, pencils, maps
Have students use the Internet to record the daily temperature of a town in Australia. Students should also be recording the daily temperature in their area. (Discuss with the students when data might be more accurate, i.e. if they use the temperature from the same source, same time of day, same town in Australia, etc.) Students could construct a line graph for each set of temperature data. What conclusions or decisions can we make from looking at these graphs?
Have the students construct a bar graph of the temperatures
recorded for our area. Students should also construct a bar graph for the
temperatures recorded in Australia. Students should then display
both sets of data in a double bar graph. They will have to consider
how to differentiate the two sets of data as well as the order, scale and
width of the bars. Ask, what conclusions might we draw from the double
bar graph that we might not have from the separate bar graphs?
What conclusions or decisions can we make from looking
at these graphs? Can you explain why such a trend is displayed in the diagram?
(As our temperatures are decreasing, theirs are increasing). Why
is this happening?
EXTENSION:
This activity would be especially beneficial if students
could be matched with pen pals of the same grade in Australia that they
could email for the daily temperatures. In addition to data collection
skills, students will be learning about another country, maps, temperature,
and seasons; and are using technology, and writing for a purpose.
OUTCOMES:
F1: use double bar graphs to display data
F2: use pictographs and bar graphs to display and
interpret data
F4: create and interpret line graphs
F7: explore relevant issues for which data collection
assists in reaching conclusions
MATERIALS: connecting cubes (Multi-links), paper, pencil
Invite groups of students to decide on a topic about which to survey their classmates. The topic should be unique (e.g. not hair or eye color) and should not be too sensitive for students of this age (e.g. mass).
Once the topic has been decided, students survey class members. Example: the number of hours spent watching television each day. Encourage each group to predict the average of their classmates. Suggest that the students work with a sample of 10 to simplify the calculations. Have the students record their data and then estimate and calculate the average. Students can use connecting cubes (multi-links) to represent the data collected on each student. For example, if one student watched 5 hours of television a day- then we would connect 5 cubes together in a tower (each group can make a concrete graph). Challenge the students to find the average by regrouping the blocks or “evening them out” (move cubes from longer rows to the shorter rows). Talk about the results and the averages found.
How would the average be different (i.e. mean goes up
or down) if…
1) each student watched two more hours per day
2) each student watched one hour less per day
3) two of the students surveyed said that they do not
watch any television
OUTCOMES:
F6: recognize and explain the effect of certain
changes in data on the mean of that data
F7: explore relevant issues for which data collection
assists in reaching conclusions
* Adapted from: Interactions: Grade
5 (1994). Toronto: Ginn Publishing Canada Inc.