Skip to main content

Mislabeled Variables

Last year, I participated in a FREE online PD offered by NCSU for teachers of statistics.  This was an amazing opportunity and I highly suggest checking it out if you're not familiar with what this institute offers.  There are courses for all levels of educators and they promote collaboration and best practices.  And as an added bonus, you receive CEUs!

I'm guessing (hoping) my intro leads you to believe that I found this gem of an activity through the above-mentioned PD.  While I have the original PDF from the MOOC-Ed, as always, I re-create activities that I have stolen borrowed from other educators.  However, here is the copyright info from the original.  I did try the link at the bottom, and it no long works.  So instead of a hyperlink, you get a snip...

Here's the breakdown of the activity... I have students fill out a survey on Google Forms with the questions located on the Student and Teacher Mislabeled Variables activity sheet.  

I typically have this form on my website or just email the class with it hyperlinked in the Student Directions' document.  Trust me, I really try to save paper and copies as much as humanly possible!  Once the students have completed the form, I open the responses in a spreadsheet, make sure there are no answers that stand out, and rearrange the columns in a random order (and yes, I truly use a random number generator in Google Sheets - it's an add-on and needed for the stat teacher in all of us!)

Original Responses: 

Meanwhile, my little angels are working on a FRAPPY (I will be sharing my take on these shortly) which I give about 12 minutes to complete - perfect for rearranging the columns in random order.  Once I have the new spreadsheet, I email my students the link to copy to their Google drive, at which point they begin discussing which variables they were assigned.  Once they have moved through their student sheet/instructions, they share their end product with me and we do a brief whole-class discussion on thoughts about the variables and appropriateness of graphs. 

Random Order: 

What could possibly go wrong with this fun activity?  Well, let me tell you.  One of the original questions on the write-up asked to pick a gender - 1 male and 0 female (or something to this effect).  Of course a discussion broke out about those who don't identify as one or the other.  Easy, I changed the question!  It now reads "Does your home have more than one level?".  I'm thinking that couldn't at all be controversial... right?

~SSB



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

AP Calculus Hunger Games Review

I created this a couple of years ago when Hunger Games was really popular. However, I thought that I would share with all of you in case you wanted to use or revamp to something newer.  I created 12 groups for the 12 districts. They decided what their name would be as a district. They had tasks each day to accomplish. The tasks were just multiple choice questions centered around the major topics of Calculus AB. This took a lot longer than I thought - about 4 days. I was forced to give them more than 15 minutes for each task (which did not make me happy since the AP exam is timed - Oh well.) I had the time, and it worked out.  You can decide how you want to the points to work, I gave them 2 points for each correct answer. It was very easy to grade as this is the student worksheet. They placed the letter of the answer in each spot.  I made them show all work on another student sheet so that I could see what we needed to review.  Each day, I would post the new rankin

Exponential Growth & Decay Scavenger Hunt

Scavenger Hunts are always fun (and easy to grade). This particular one is all about applications of exponential growth & decay. My students seem to understand this topic really well, but I still wanted to provide more practice.  When I did this hunt originally, I created the cards with the answer on the front and the question on the back. Once I figured out how to copy and make it work, it was great because I could use the cards over and over again. However, they started looking old, and I lost some of the cards. So t his year, I placed the answer and question on the front. It made it so much easier to copy!  If you would like to try this in your class, here is a copy ! I included the solutions as well.  UPDATE: I created this activity and transformed into a remote version.  Remote Version: SE Scavenger Hunt               TE Scavenger Hunt ~RJ

Adding & Subtracting Rational Expressions Drag & Drop

Because Math 3 now has drag & drop on the final exam, students need the practice. So, I created one using Google Slides. It went over really well!  While this only took the students about 40-45 minutes to complete, it took me about 2 days to create this activity. Oh well, at least it is cute! :) I used Google Drawings to create the scene and took a screenshot of the drawing to post as the background in Google Slides. This worked so that students could only move the answers.  I created this for an Honors class and one of the problems (#5 - the one pictured) really stumped the kiddos. I loved it! They kept thinking that x - 1 was not part of the common denominator...they didn't realize that they needed to simplify after subtracting. It really made them think!   When they were finished, they shared it with me! I really think that this helped the kids get more practice on drag & drop while working on adding and subtracting rational expressions!  Here is the ac