Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Proof - Collecting Data

Most of the students that came up for lunch were from my homeroom and when I asked whether it was the same for the other two classes, they said yes. Instead of taking their words alone, I decided to take some math time to discuss the lunch/recess situation. Were all three homerooms getting 16 minutes of recess? Were they getting 16 minutes for lunch? The answer was a resounding “no” from all the 4th graders.


If the students were not getting the 16 minutes for lunch and recess as scheduled, how many minutes were they getting daily? We had the discussion that if they were to talk to the principal about their problem today, the principal would say according to the schedule, you have 16 minutes to eat which is plenty. The students were upset and said they weren’t getting the 16 minutes. How could we prove that they were not getting their 16 minutes? Data.


We created a list of reasons why data is important when trying to prove a claim. In each homeroom, a student was assigned to collect the data on how many recess minutes and lunch minutes they received each day. There are two clocks - one by the entrance to the playground and another right outside the cafeteria doors used by the data collectors to make sure all three homeroom times were consistent.  

Students' list of why data is important


After three weeks of data, I made a photocopy of the data sheet so that everyone in the homeroom would have a copy. 

Because there were so many data points, we used a graph to help organize the trend - a line plot (I strategically picked the line plot for the classes to display our data because line plots are part of the 4th grade Common Core standards.) We looked at the data and discussed how to set up our line plot. We used three different colors to represent the data points from the different homerooms. The line plot was also on big paper so that everyone could easily see it. After we plotted our information, groups were formed to come up with a graph name.

A student adding data to the line plot.

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