Provocation for Data Handling Unit

After presenting my students with a pre-assessment to gauge their level of understanding, I found that nearly all...except one wrote I don't know...yet! This then made me think that I need to really build a good visual and conceptual understanding. 

So I emptied out boxes of linking cubes and posed the question

Show me visually what is the most common colour?

I explained that I didn't want to know how many of each colour their were. I wanted to be able to 'see' their answer.

Without any prompting this team automatically started to organise into colours. They didn't do that in the pre-assessment I gave them 5 minutes earlier!

This team sorted and then counted. We discussed that the question required them to show me the answer visually. 

This team organised them straight into lines.

This team tried to go up, but soon struck a problem!

This group took a different route. They individually started to make groups of colours. After they finished the class reflected that it was difficult to see which was the most common colour. Someone then said if they made them all the same shape, then it might be easier!

My next question was, how could you have organised this better to make it even easier for me to see the answer. 

The result...

After about an hour of engaged students. I then shared that they basically just did the pre-assessment task without any help. They all went... really... we did? We discussed that all you have to do now is replace the coloured cubes with numbers. 

We also then reflected on how we could improve these visual graphs even more.

"Add" numbers at the top was one suggestion. 

We then talked about where we could add numbers, introducing X and Y axis.

On our reflection wall we shared what we had learnt from todays inquiry.

You need to organise your data

You need to show things in the same way, like using lines or shapes

You need to be accurate

You need to start from zero

You need to answer the question