Module 5

Common Core Standards:

-"First Impressions" about the standards:
     My first impression when looking at the standards was that the wording was somewhat confusing to me.  I feel like there was a lot of unnecessary wording.  When looking at the standards I feel like they were missing important qualities and that the word usage was too much and not to the point.  I also was surprised at what was expected from the children at each grade level.  I feel like the standards have been raised quite a bit from what I remember learning in school.

-How do concepts progress through the grades?
     The concepts progress through the grades by working as a building block method.  What a student was to learn in kindergarten in geometry would be elaborated on more in first grade, second grade, and so on.  In geometry in kindergarten students are learning how to identify shapes and in first grade they start being able to reason with the shapes.  The higher the grade level goes the more intricate each part of the subject of math becomes.

-How do concepts change and increase in rigor and complexity for the students?
     As expected, as the grade gets higher so does the level of complexity and rigor involved for each grade level.  Students learn their basic math skills in kindergarten and those same skills are built upon and added to throughout their years in school. 

-Common Core and NCTM Standards:

• Does the common core standards align with what the NCTM states students should be able to know and do within the different grade level bands?
  
• When looking at the common core standards and the NCTM I would have to say that they align pretty well with each other.  As stated on the module checklist a big difference visually would be that the NCTM is structured in grade level bands instead of individual grade levels.  The common core standards seemed to be written in a little more detailed way but then again I do think (as I mentioned earlier) the common core can be to wordy. 
• Give examples of which standards align as well as examples of what is missing from the Common Core but is emphasized in the NCTM standards and vice versa:
• In the NCTM students were to: Discuss events related to students’ experiences as likely or unlikely and using personal experience and the terms likely and unlikely is not something that I saw used in the Common Core. 
• In first grade common core standards want the students to be able to sort data in up to three categories.  In the NCTM it said that data should be sorted into categories but it does not give the number of categories students should be able to do. 
• Common Core in Kindergarten says: "classify objects into given categories" and NCTM says: "sort and classify objects according to their attributes and organize data about the objects".  These two seemed to align to me.  I understand not word for word but I saw them as being pretty similar. 

Curriculum Resources:

I chose to do: "Data Day: Standing Jumps and Arm Spans" for grade 2. 

In this lesson children measure the length of a standing long jump in centimeters and the length of an arm span in inches.

-What mathematical ideas would you want your students to work through?

The mathematical idea I would want my students to work through would be:

• Comparing inches and centimeters
• Collecting data
• Compare numbers and record data
• Measuring distances and lengths to the nearest inch or centimeter

-How would you work to bring the mathematics out?

To bring the mathematical ideas out during this lesson I would need to make sure:

• Students knew what inches and centimeters were
• Students knew how to measure both inches and centimeters
• Students knew how to collect data
• Make data collection fun for them (such as measuring arm spans)
• Students understood the numbers that they were comparing
• Students knew how to round numbers to the nearest inch or centimeter

-How would you modify the lesson to make it more accessible or more challenging for your students?

• A way to make this lesson more accessible or easier for the students would be to let them write down the exact number that their distances was instead of having the students to round their numbers to the nearest centimeter or inch.
• A way to make this lesson more challenging for the students would be to have students to find 3 objects in the classroom that are closely related to the distances that they have recorded in their journals.

-What questions might you ask the students as you watch them work?

• Do you think your line judge is judging fair?
• Who has the longest distances on arm span?
• Why do we use inches for arm span instead of centimeters?
• Which form of measurement would we use when judging how wide the classroom is?

-What might you learn about their understanding by listening to them or observing them?

In listening to the students and observing them it allows for the teacher to know if the students understand how to use centimeters and inches as well as to know if they are able to collect, analyze, and compare data. 

-How do the concepts taught in this lesson align to the common core?

The common core in grade 2 says that students will "generate measurement data by measuring lengths of several objects to the nearest whole number..." which is what is going on in this in this lesson.  This activity in my opinion aligns very well with this standard from the Common Core.

Box Plots:

-Three Questions to ask the class:

1. Which class has the highest number of trash collected by only one student?
       Our class because our highest outlier is past 110 and theirs is just past 90.

2. Which class appears to have collected the most trash?  How did you get your answer?
     Our class seems to have collected the most trash because the median of our class is higher than the German class and the majority the majority of our data falls past 70 where theirs stops beside for the outlying number.

3. Do you believe that this data collection is fair being that the German class is based off of 42 students and ours is based off of 18?
     (This would be an opinion question but I am going to give my answer)
     I do not believe this study could be considered completely accurate because there is such a drastic difference in the number of students used in each set.  If the number of students in our class was around 30-42 I would think that we could get a better understanding from this study. 



Module 4

How Much Taller Video:

This video was very interesting for me to watch and I was very surprised to hear the responses that the students came up with.  When the teacher asked the question: "How tall is the typical first grader?", everyone's answer was very interesting to me.  Samantha talked about how she thought that the typical first grader would be 1 to 2 inches smaller than her because a lot of the students heights were close to her but she still felt like most first graders would be smaller.  She never really explained why which confused me but it was neat to hear her explain in that way instead of trying to use the mean, median, mode, or range.  Llyod's response talking about the middle number of the data was the closest to the average was very smart to me.  In doing data collections I have noticed that a lot of the times that the mean is most of the time close to the average.  The question of "How much taller is a fourth grader than a first grader?", was also a very interesting conversation for me to listen to.  Llyod was the most impressive student to me in this part of the video because he wanted to use the range as his tool of finding out how much taller the fourth graders were than the first graders.  I was also surprised to hear that he did not think an adequate number could be taken from this study and that a larger sample would need to be taken in order to have an accurate response.  One thing that stood out to me throughout this video was the when talking about average(mean) students related it's definition with mode's definition of "most common".  I am not quite sure if that should have been addressed by the teacher and clarified or not...any suggestions?

Case Studies:

My confusion of mean and mode as "most common" continued when reading through the case studies and completing the assignment.  I felt like students were closely relating the two and may have almost had them confused at times.  In Lydia's Case study Erin intrigued me when talking about finding the middle number (median) to help determine Robbie's numbers.  This lead to a class discussion of how to find median as well as mean.  I also must say I agreed with Robbie in this case study that using his mean may not give an accurate data point on the line because he never actually blew the distance they were wanting to use.  In Phoebe's case study I enjoyed Trudy and Javier's usage of mean and the way that they explained it.  Although they only used their group of four members to determine the mean for the average height for the grade they still showed they understood mean and knew how to get it.  The students did ask questions that were valid points about them only using four members to determine and expressed their concerns that those four members could have been really short or really tall which would not have been accurate.  I think those are all great concerns but the fact that the group used mean versus adding up all numbers like some of the other groups was impressive.  In Maura's case study I liked reading the students responses because they used ideas such as median, range, shape of data, and are using numerical statements.  I enjoyed the numerical statements because it showed the students thinking about different concepts such as how since 5 fourth graders were taller than any first graders that the fourth graders must be taller.  Although we know that may not be accurate I still found it to be a good way of thinking.  Nadia's case study surprised me in when talking about the mean students did not want to use 13.2 but instead wanted to use 13 because it was a whole number and because it "came up the most".  This is another time where I felt like mode was being confused with mean because you can have a remainder in an average.

Other Questions to Consider:

Find examples of averages in a daily newspaper, from the sports page, or any page.  then describe what these averages "mean"--their significance, implications within the context of the story, and so forth.

***I had to use a website because my parents have gotten rid of their newspaper before I could get to it but I did find a website showing important averages related to something I am interested in.***

I looked at the website: http://www.usa.com/public-school/kenansville-elementary-kenansville-nc-370120000499.html?nv=duplin-county-nc-public-schools that showed the average scores for Kenansville Elementary School, the school district, and the state average for scores on the EOG tests.  These averages allowed for the person viewing them to be able to see how Kenansville Elementary students scored on their EOG’s by grade level as a whole in comparison to the average for the school district and the state.  This website does a good job with using averages because they have it organized using percent and has other information to compare it to.  I like being able to see how students perform at different grade levels on tests and I really like seeing how each school compares to their school district as well as the state.  This would be a helpful website when explaining averages to a class because you could explain to the students that the number (in percent form) is how all the students in that grade performed and that adding the scores up and dividing by the number of test taken would give them an “idea” of what the average score was in that grade for each part of the test. 

Annual Salary is often a touchy subject for teachers whose low pay and high workloads are axiomatic.  Search the virtual archives of a newspaper in an area where you would like to teach.  Look for data about averages and entry-level salaries as well as information about pay scales and increases.  Evaluate the data.  What does it tell you?  What doesn't it tell you?

School teacher salary has always been a hot topic due to the fact that it is considerably low for the amount of work that the teachers put into their job.  In doing my research online about salary I found the average pay for an elementary school teacher in Duplin County to be $38,656.  I must say I was shocked when I saw this because it was considerably higher that what I had seen in past years where the average elementary school teacher was making $34,000.  I was shocked to see that the 10^th percentile pay was $31,180.  This surprised me because in looking through websites and articles I noticed beginning teacher salary to be $32,300.  I am however confused as to how some people are making less when first year teachers start out with a higher pay.  The different data I have researched have shown me that there is a pay increase for earning your masters and well as being national board certified.  I did learn that you must be teaching three years before becoming national board certified but I was not able to find the information as to how much the pay increase would be.  I was able to find information about how two of the schools in Duplin County that were under revision from the state had a $5,000 sign on bonus incentive for teachers who were to start teaching there.  I was not able to find out if it was an automatic $5,000 or if it was over a course of contracted years.  Teacher’s salary is always going to be something in question but I believe that to be a good thing because it needs to be.  Teacher’s need to get paid reasonably for the amount of work they have to put in not only in the school day but as well as work they are having to do when they get home.  Needless to say I believe a teacher’s job is never fully finished

Do some reading and thinking about the concept of the average or mean and its application in schools through the bell curve.  What does the mean suggest in terms of grade and achievement?  Why is the concept represented with a bell curve?  What are the implications for grading on the curve?  Is it fair?  Why or Why not?

 

The bell curve is something that I was familiar with in relation to my statistics class but after researching it I now feel like I better understand its relation in education.  The bell curve is shaped like a bell and has a middle section that would be for the “average” score on something and then the outside two areas; the one on the left would be for low grades and the one to the right would be for higher grades.  I also learned that standard deviation is connected with bell curves.  Once the teacher has found the mean scores for the test they can then use standard deviation and determine how far out in each direction they want to go in order for the score to be considered “average”.  The bell curve is designed as a tool that shows where the majority of the students are scoring and to show that there are some students who are not performing as well or are performing better.  The bell curve could be considered unfair because when the teacher decides what the standard deviation in both directions will be they already have an idea of how many students they need to fit within the “average” portion.  Bell curves are a neat tool to see how the students are performing as a whole but I do not personally think they should be something dwelled on by the teacher. 

 

 

Working with the Mean Activity:

How did you use the cubes to figure out the problems?

I first got my cubes out and divided them up into the five groups that were already listed for me.  I removed the extra blocks from the 9 and 12 bags and used them to form groups of 8 in the cubes I already had laid out.  I then counted up how many cubes I would need to form the other bags and to make the mean 8 for all of the total bags.  I knew I needed to work with 56 blocks because when (I understand that there are actually no bags of 8 in this group but the average is still 8)  I did the same thing by adding the numbers up and again I was able to get 56 and when divided by the number of bags (7) I was able to get a mean of 8 again.
divided by the total number of bags (7) I knew I would get a mean of 8.   I was able to make 4 bags with 8 peanuts, 2 bags with 7 peanuts, and 1 bag with 10 peanuts.  This gave me a total of 56 which when divided by the total number of bag (7) gave me a mean of 8 for the 7 bags.  Another set of numbers I was able to come with was 2 bags of 10, 2 bags of 9, and 3 bags of 6. 

How does this model help demonstrate what the mean represents?

The model helped to demonstrate mean because it allowed for me to use manipulative to guide me to finding it.  This model let me know that I had to have 7 bags and that the mean of those bags needed to be 8 peanuts.  I was then able to determine that I was going to need 56 peanuts to work with so that I could make the average for each bag 8 peanuts.  This model showed me how you need to work with the number and figure out the total number your going to be working with to allow you to work through the problem and to use the manipulative to your advantage.

How did you use the line plot to figure out the problem?

When working with the line plot I first used the numbers that were given to me and put them on there as a way to see how many more I would need and a way to see how far I would be away from the actual mean of 8 when forming my bags.  I used the line plot hand in hand with my actual groups of cubes to give me a visual as well as a graph on paper.

How does this model help demonstrate what mean represents?

This model helps us to understand what mean represents because it gives you a visual of how close the bags are to being 8 and how you need to alter them to keep the bags as close to 8 as possible when only having 7 bags. 

What does the average tell us about the whole data set?

The average in this data set tells us that the majority of the bags that we get should have 8 peanuts in them.  It allows for people to know that they can expect for their bags to be around 8 peanuts because that is what they are averaging as a whole group. 

Module 3

Lost Teeth Lesson:


First Video Segment: Why might the teacher ask students to think about differences in the range at each grade level?  What insight do you get into children's thinking as they talked about why the ranges would be different?

I feel like the teacher asked the students about the differences in the range at different grade levels to get the children's minds working and to show them that the range is going to change as the grade levels do.  The children are all talking about how they think the range would be for the different grade levels to inquire about the research before they form their graphs and do their research.  When listening to the students thinking about why the range was changing I must say I chuckled a little bit.  Children have such elaborate ideas at young ages of what they believe.  The last little boy who spoke was talking about how he thought that the number of teeth lost was because some peoples bodies just want new teeth.  Although we know that is not exactly how it works, that child showed me how students are all going to have their different ideals as to why things happen and how to conduct their research.

Second Video Segment: Did the children notice what you consider to be important features of the data? Are there features that they didn't notice?

The children in this video segment noticed quite a few important features of the data.  The two girls pointed out one thing that I did not expect them to.  When they mentioned that the boy who had only lost 2 teeth in comparison to the girl who had lost 12 in the first grade was probably due to the fact that he was young for his grade.  The students were able to point out the mode, the minimum number, the maximum number.  They also had the total number of teeth that were lost in the classroom.  I did not notice in the video where the average and median were talked about.  I feel like mean, median, mode, and range are all things that need to be discussed together especially when working with different data.

Third Video Segment: Did the children notice what you consider to be important features of the data? Are there features that they didn't notice?

The children noticed what I thought they would.  They were surprised that a student had lost 6 teeth in kindergarten because in their second grade class a few people had lost 7 teeth.  During the part talking about the third grade class the students made good points on the "I don't know category" because they talked about how it may be due to the fact that they had lost so many teeth over the years they could not keep count anymore.  The group discussing the kindergarten surprised me because they didn't mention much about the highest numbered category or lowest.  They did talk about range but I feel like they should have elaborated more on their findings.

Stem and Leaf Plots Article:

I found this article to be very informative and interesting but the majority of things that I read I already knew about stem and leaf plots.  I have always enjoyed doing stem and leaf plots for some reason and the usage of displaying birthdays through a stem and leaf plot is actually a very neat idea.  Instead of starting off in kindergarten teaching stem and leaf plots in the form of ones and tens the teacher could introduce the stem and leaf chart in the form of the birthday one shown in the article.  The idea of displaying numbers on a stem and leaf chart made more sense to me when reading about forty-five in that kids could mistake that with 405 instead of 45.  If we were to teach students to say things such as "forty zero" to help students to not get confused in writing their numbers.

I plan to use stem and leaf plots in my classroom as I mentioned earlier as a way of organizing information for the students whether it is with using place values with numbers or in seeing something like the birthdays.  Stem and leaf plots I feel like really help students to grasp the ideas of the ones, tens, hundreds, etc. places because they get to see the numbers broken down by their place values.

Other Questions to Consider:

Find an example of a line graph and share on your blog.  Describe the data used in the graph and why the line graph is an appropriate representation. 

This line graph shows the students scores on their 10 math test.  The dot is located at where their grade was for each test and then the dots are connected with a line as the grades are collected.  It allows for the students to see the change in their grades by looking at the line changing.  The numeric values of the test number and the grades are correlated that's why using a line graph for this collection of data works well.

What is the difference between a bar graph and a histogram?

Bar graphs generally represent categorical data and histograms represent continuous data.  Another different between the two of them is the way they are drawn.  Both graphs use bars but in a bar graph the bars are generally separated and in a histogram the bars are drawn together.

Bar Graph:

 

Histogram:





Module 2

Lost Tooth

I generated the line plots below in the blog so spacing may be off some but the numbers should be correct.  I could not find a program that would actually form a line plot.

KINDERGARTEN

X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X            X     X    
X     X    X     X     X          X  
0     1     2      3      4     5     6

FIRST GRADE
                                           X
                                                    X
X          X     X     X     X            X                    X
X          X     X     X     X     X    X     X     X    X             X
0     1     2     3     4      5      6     7      8       9    10   11    12   

SECOND GRADE
                                         
                                                         X
                                                         X
                                                         X
                                                         X
                                                         X
                                                         X    X
                                                 X     X    X     X              X
              X                                X     X    X     X     X       X     X
0     1     2     3     4     5     6     7     8     9     10     11     12     13

THIRD GRADE


                                                   X
                                           X     X
                                           X     X
                       X                 X     X     X                 X                                            X
          X          X    X          X     X     X          X     X    X         X                 X     X
0   1   2   3   4  5    6     7    8     9     10     11  12  13    14   15  16   17  18  19    Don't Know

Questions:
1. In reviewing the data I noticed that the grades were all different because in kindergarten many of the students had not matured much so the majority lost 0 teeth.  If I had to find a similarity I would say that First-Third grades were the most similar because more students were beginning to lose teeth and they numbers were pretty balanced for those grades across the line plot.

2.  If just the mode was given to you then you would know what the most common number of teeth lost for each grade would be but that would be all.  You would not be able to determine how many students were in the classroom, what the highest and lowest number of teeth lost were, and you would only have that one set of numbers from each grade level to base information off of. 

3.  Median Number of Teeth Lost For Each Grade:
 Kindergarten:    0
 First Grade:       5.5
 Second Grade:   8
 Third Grade:      9

In knowing the median that would allow me to know that was the middle number in the collection of the data.  That would also give me a good idea of what the average number of teeth lost for each grade was because when working towards the median it is usually very close to the average number.

4.  If just the median and range were given to me it would give me an idea of what group of numbers were used as well as what the middle number is.  I would know what the middle number was and the range could help me to know how far out in each direction I could go. 

If the lowest, highest, and median numbers were given to me I would know the numbers we were working with from each grade level across the x-axis and in having the median number I would know what the middle number was and where the majority of the data would fall.

I think the statistics would help to form an adequate picture of the data because you would be able to find a mean, median, mode, range, and form graphs from the data that was given.  It would give the person doing the study a general idea of what the amount of teeth lost at each grade level would look like.


 Case Studies

Case Study number 4 with Sally was very interesting to me because it was the first time I have actually noticed that you need to be clear cut and direct with asking questions.  This study showed how the question that I would think so simple as "Did you have milk with breakfast?" could be twisted into a big confusion and lead students to finding other questions outside of that one question.  This case study helped me to build an understanding that in order to collect the data you are looking for that your question needs to be in a direct fashion.  Also, this case study taught me how checking behind yourself on data is important.  The students in this lesson had clothes pins to show how many students had milk with breakfast and then formed groups of who did and who did not.  When the groups were formed the students noticed that the groups were off.  The teacher and Sally had to show students how to compare the clothes pins with the actual number in the groups as well as had to help them work through why the groups were off as well as how they could fix the groups.

Case Study number 5 with Nadia was another one that showed me how when asking a question you need to be direct.  The question that was trying to be reached here ultimately was "How many times have you moved from house to house with all of your belongings" but when asked the general question of "how many times have you moved?" students were finding themselves confused as to what moving meant.  When doing research and wanting to find an exact result you must make sure your question is clear, direct, and to the point even if you have to explain it further to make sure you get the appropriate results you are looking for.

Case Study number 6 with Andrea shows how forming a question in a clear and direct way can prove difficult for the person asking the question.  The person asking the question knows in their mind what kind of information they are looking to obtain from their study but when asking the question to others they might not see it so clearly and will have to question further.  This study showed me that when forming a question for a study although it may take a lot of thinking time you need to take the time to build a question so that you get the information you are looking for without confusing the people you are actually asking the question to. 

Textbook Questions: Writing to Learn
1. Statistics is different from mathematics because one key difference is focus on variability of data in statistical reasoning.  Mathematics works more with numbers and procedures where statistics is more about working with numbers to collect data about a certain population.
A mathematical question would be: how did you go about finding the mean and what does the mean represent?
A statistical question would be: Given the mean of the data, what can you determine about the data that was collected?

2. The shape of data is "a sense of how data are spread out or grouped, what characteristics about the data set as a whole can be described, and what the data tell us in a global way about the population from which they are taken." (page 72)   This to me means that the shape of the data tells us everything we need to know about it.  It lets us know the groupings, the characteristics of the data, and would allow for us to graph the data collected.

3. Attribute activities are important because they allow for students to sort data and teaches them ways to categorize and group data to use in their studies.

4. Data questions that could be asked to students at the K-2 level could be ones such as:

• What is your favorite day of the week?
• What is your favorite food?
• What is your favorite color?
• What is your favorite part about school?

Data questions that could be asked to students in the higher elementary grades could be ones such as:

• Who is your favorite historical figure?
• Who is your favorite author?
• How many miles do you live from school?

(**Also Other Question to Consider**)

5. When putting data into categories the graphs that can be used are bar graphs, circle graphs, picture graphs, and tally charts.  All of these graphs help to organize data into their different categories in order to look at the data as a whole.

6. A histogram is a type of a bar graph that the categories' are consecutive equal intervals along a scale(pg.81) and are used for grouping data by a specific interval.  "The height and length of each bar is determined by the number of data elements falling into that particular interval" (pg.81)

7. To form a circle graph teachers can use the human circle graph techniques where students get in a circle and stretch string among them in order to show their separation of differences.  Another way students can form a circle graph is through drawing the circle by hand on a piece of paper, a board, or whatever materials they have and dividing up the circle into parts according to their data.  The third way students can form a circle graph is by starting off having students to make a bar graph and then having the students to cut out the bars and tape them from end to end.  This will form a circle where students can determine a center and well as draw lines from the different points.

Circle graphs displays ratios rather than quantities which allows for a large set of data to be compared to a smalls set of data.

8. An example in where you could use median over mean would be in a situation where someone was talking about real estate.  If you had houses at the prices of: $20,000, $200,000, $1 million, $1.5 million, $2 million, $2 million, and $3 million you would want to give people the median number that the houses were worth you were selling because if you were to average the low $20,000 house into your prices then it would give a very swayed result and mislead the buyers.

A reason someone one choose mean over median could be in a case of owning a restaurant that prided their selves on having an affordable $5 menu.  In that case you would want to use the mean to prove to customers that the average price of a meal is only $5.

Other Questions to Consider:
Recording data in a meaningful way is important because it gives the person collecting the data as well as other people that the data is shared with accurate information on what was collected.  Data needs to be recorded in a meaningful way to that it can be understood as well as interpreted and set forth on the usage that it was collected for. 

Module 1

Famous People:

When thinking about what names that my peers might have chose as someone famous they would like to have a conversation with I found myself questioning whether they would have a socialite person like I did, an inspirational leader, an artist, a religious figure, or what kind of person they one actually enjoy meeting.  I had a hard time myself coming up with the exact person that I would like to meet but when thinking through all the people who are inspirational to me I found Oprah to be the ideal person for me to choose.  I found myself wondering before I reviewed all of the names offered by my peers if I would see a name in the selection that would ultimately make me change my mind on my choice.  I found myself wondering how many of the same names I would find, wanting to know how many people chose someone alive, and how many people were going to choose people in which I had never heard of.  Seeing names that I had not heard before was actually a big concern of mine before I reviewed the names because I felt like it would make me feel less educated in comparison to my classmates.  The idea of going through all of the names was one that frightened me yet excited me just to see who my classmates would enjoy spending time with as well as reviewing their blogs to see the reasons that they chose certain people.

I had a hard time deciding where to put certain people but I decided on the way they are listed below.  I chose to sort my names into three groups being: Entertainment icons, historical icons, and religious/spiritual icons.  This was a quite difficult choice of groupings because I feel as if it is one that a majority of the classmates are going to choose.

Entertainment Icons:

·         Adam Sandler

·         Barbara Walters

·         C.S Lewis

·         Dr. Seuss

·         Ellen DeGeneres

·         Jennifer Aniston

·         Julianne Hough

·         Kelly Clarkson

·         Kenny Chesney

·         Morgan Freeman

·         Oprah Winfrey

·         Shane Smith

·         The Little Mermaid

·         Walt Disney

Historical Icons:

·         Anne Frank

·         Cesar Chavez

·         Dr. Martin Luther King

·         Hitler

·         Leonardo da Vinci

·         Rosa Parks

 

 

Religious/Spiritual Icons:

·         God

·         Haregewoin Teferra

·         Jesus

·         Laozi

·         Mother Teresa

·         Siddhartha Gautama

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After sorting the data it was clear to me that the majority of the people chose to meet someone that was from the entertaining field.  The results when sorted show me that my peers have all different ideals of people they want to meet because there were only about three names that were repeated during this collection of data.  I found myself realizing that due to the results we must have some people who are rather spiritual people wanting to meet such people as God, Mother Teresa, and the others listed.  I understand that in the group of Religious/Spiritual icons that not all of the people were a religious figure being why I called it spiritual as well.  I also listed Haregewoin Teferra in this group instead of the historical icon because I felt as if she was a spiritual woman to do the things that she did and I find her more as a spiritual person in my mind than a historical icon. When looking at the historical names that were chosen I feel like a lot of the names chosen of people to speak with had to deal with how it would be interesting to know what it was like for them during their era and what kind of things they had to endure.  I feel like Hitler was put in this category as someone to speak to not as someone to adore but as to someone to find out “what in the world he was thinking” and to find out if he had any remorse for his actions.  I feel like the people who chose the entertainment icons for the simple reason of they liked to be entertained.  They like to read, laugh, sing, listen, etc. 

 

 

Further Questions I would ask when doing this data collections would be:

·         If I had given my peers the a more direct question and had them to pick one person they would like to have a conversation with in the entertainment industry would I have more of the same answers?

·         If I had given my peers a list of famous historical icons would more people choose positive influences or negative influences in history?

·         If I had given my peers a list of famous people that was half male and half female would I have more males or females chosen? Why?

 

In order to get at my own questions during the survey I could first start off my doing as we did as a class and ask for any famous person they would want to have a conversation with.  After I collected all of the answers and sorted them then I could have my peers to select a person from the list that their peers have chosen as their favorite person in the entertainment industry.  Doing a study like this would probably answer yes on my question as to if I would have more of the same answers.  To get to question two I could have a list of the historical icons that my peers chose and have them to each select the person they would want to have a conversation with.  If the majority chose Hitler I would know that the majority would choose to talk to a negative historical influence which in my opinion would to just pick his brain to see what he was thinking.  That is a conversation I think I would actually like to have as well.  To get to my last question I would again pass out a list of the famous people half male and half female and have them to pick their favorite.  Whatever the majority came up to be I would then go through and ask people from the majority sex their reasoning behind choosing that person.  I feel like this would give a good answer to the question why?  We would know if it was something to do with sex or if it was just by coincidence. 

 

During the sorting I used all data but on one certain one as I mentioned earlier Haregewoin Teferra is listed under religious/spiritual which some may disagree with and believe she should be under historical but I felt like she was a spiritual influence when reading about her.  I also had a problem putting Hitler down as a “historical icon” although he is, I feel like he is one of the most disgusting individuals and should not even be allowed to be in such a distinguished category with such people as Dr. Martin Luther King and Anne Frank

 

 

 

 

How Many Pockets? Video:

 

Something I noticed as being very important in this video is how involved the teacher was with her students and although they were hyperactive she still had good control over them.  Another thing I noticed was the method she used with her students in having them to raise their thumbs instead of their hands.  I found this to be in important learning experience for myself because it seemed like less of a distraction because instead of hands in the other student’s faces they were able to get the teachers attention without being all over the other students and distracting them.  Another thing that stood out to me a lot was how she actually got on the floor and interacted with the students instead of sitting in a chair looking down on them.  This is something I have always liked when teachers did because it seems less intimidating to the students.  I enjoyed in the video when the student Matthew was trying to figure out how many kids had five pockets and kept getting confused she did not pressure him to give her an answer.  I also enjoyed when asked “how do you know” and he responded “I’m not sure” she did not belittle him and force him to answer but instead said “ok” and moved on to allow someone else to try to answer the question.  I liked how the teacher allowed the student’s time to figure out problems on their own without digging into them to get an answer and allowing other students to build off of what had been said.  I have seen in the classroom too many times where the teacher pries into the students mind and makes them shy away from answering anymore questions.  In this video you see the teacher allow students build off of what one another were saying in order to gather one large concept among all of them.  I think this teacher did an excellent job at keeping control of her classroom and by helping them to build a higher concept of thinking off of one another.  I believe the idea the students are working on is of course collecting data and sorting by keeping the graph on the board but it is also a lesson of building a larger concept.  The idea of building a larger concept seems to be addressed during this lesson by having the students to build off of one another’s ideas. 

 

 

Statistics as Problem Solving

When hearing the word statistics after taking a statistics class sophomore year I think of a group of numbers used to collect a mass amount of data of a group of people.  In my statistics class we learned about how to collect data, how to analyze it, and how to come up with a figure that would give you an idea about a group as whole. A statistical question that could be asked would be how many people buy steak at the grocery store during Labor Day weekend?  While being in the grocery store at the beach this weekend I noticed that approximately 6 out of every 10 people at the meat section were buying steaks.  That being said that would be 60% of the people at the grocery store buy steaks during Labor Day weekend.  I understand after this module and after taking a statistics class that this number is not an exact figure but it gives an idea of the question you had.  Using the four components of the statistical process I would 1. Start by asking my question: how many people buy steak at the grocery store Labor Day weekend? One would have to be at a grocery store during Labor Day weekend and keep a tally or some sort of count to collect data which would be step 2 of collecting appropriate data.  I would then have to use step 3 which is to analyze the data by looking over the numbers collected and the using step 4 of interpreting the results by looking at the numbers and coming up with a total figure of how many people actually buy steak labor day weekend.  In finishing this module and watching the videos I understand how statistics can be used every day and how it fits into our life to give us an idea of how to collect data and then use it to solve a question.