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Middle Grades MATH
Thematics:
The STEM Project: Trashsketball
Content Strand:
Data Analysis
Teacher:
Kelly Hankins
School:
Hayes Middle School,
Albuquerque, NM
Grade 7
Project Director:
Jim Williamson
40 minutes
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Trashsketball: In the MathThematics
Curriculum math concepts are centered around themes that relate
to children's lives. Basketball is the chosen theme for this lesson
on data analysis. The class discusses basketball and the way in
which points are scored as an introduction to a game of their own:
Trashketball! Using wads of paper as a ball and the trash bin as
a basket students rotate to different stations where they can score
one, two, or three points. They tally their scores and once the
whistle's blown students make a frequency chart with the data they
have just collected. The teacher writes each person's total points
on the board in a disorganized fashion. As a class they organize
and display the Trashketball scores in a stem-and-leaf plot and
a bar graph. Students analyze the data learning mathematical concepts
such as mean, median, mode, range and cluster. In addition, the
power of data displays is revealed to them as they see how the stem-and-leaf
plot provides exact data whereas the bar graph does not. Afterwards,
the class re-plays the game, only this time using the opposite hand.
In pairs, students make their own stem-and-leaf plots identifying
the statistical values previously learned as a class.
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