Ask Matt Mentor
Dear Matt, I would like to teach more statistics in my middle school math classes. Besides mean, median and mode, what other topics are accessible to these students? Response: Middle school students will probably have had previous experience asking interesting questions and collecting data to answer those questions. At the middle school level, they will have a better sense of formulating questions about topics of interest so that it will be easier to collect data. However, continuing to collect and represent data, including data over time, is an excellent way to build their intuition and understanding of data analysis and statistics. Talking about the “story” in the data is a powerful tool for building analytic skills. Middle school students can also add to their repertoire of tools for representing data. They are probably already familiar with creating pictographs, line plots and graphs, bar graphs, and possibly circle graphs. Since middle school is a time for studying angle measurement as well as percent and proportion, this is a natural link to refining students’ facility with creating and analyzing circle graphs. In addition, students at this level can begin to use stem-and-leaf plots, box plots, and scatter plots to represent data and analyze patterns and relationships. Matt |
Matt Mentor, a wise and experienced teacher, offers advice about teaching mathematics topics to beginning teachers. Of course, experienced teachers can join in as well. Here’s how it works: Send your answers to MattMentorMCTM@aol.com and Matt will post as many different solutions that adequately address the question as are received. Have a Question for Matt? |
