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All in the Family (Grades 3-4)

Master Teacher

Gina Stevenson

Time Allotment

Two class periods (1 hour each)

Overview

How many people are in your family? Students will participate in a series of hands-on, online, and multimedia activities to examine the concepts of data collection.

After collecting data on how many people are in their families, students will then use this information to create a tally chart and a class line plot. Students will then review vocabulary such as maximum, minimum, range and mode by using the information on the line plot. Students will also become a human line plot and learn a great strategy for finding the median of any group of data.

Students will view a clip from the series Mathica’s Mathshop, where they will be able to practice finding the range, median, and mode of another group of data.

Following the video portion of the lesson, students will visit a Web site to test their data collection skills and how well they have mastered the concepts of range, median, and mode.

Subject Matter

Mathematics

Learning Objectives

Students will be able to:

Use data to make a tally chart and a line plot.
Find the maximum, minimum, range, median, and mode of the data.

South Carolina Standards

(From the South Carolina Mathematics Curriculum Standards, grades 3-5, available online at http://www.myscschools.com)

3rd Grade

Data Analysis & Probability:

D.I.C.1. Construct line (dot) plots for data sets.
D.II.B.1. Find the median and mode of a data set and explain what each indicates about the data set.
D.I.C.1. Read and interpret information from tables, pictographs, bar graphs, and line (dot) plots.

4th Grade

Data Analysis & Probability:

D.I.C.1. Read and interpret information from tables, line graphs, and bar graphs.
D.I.D.2. Describe types of graphs that may be used to represent numerical data.

Media Components

Video

Mathica’s Mathshop: Super Gnome , “Reading Graphs.”

This fairy-tale style program puts math into meaningful contexts and engages viewers in story-related problems involving numbers, measurement, and geometry.

To access this video segment, log on to your account at ETV’s StreamlineSC Web site (http://etv.streamlinesc.org). In the search by keyword box, type Mathica’s Mathshop: Super Gnome. Click the series title and then download the “Reading Graphs” video clip to your computer desktop and preview it. The segment runs one minute and 41 seconds.

(Note to Teacher: If you don’t have an account with ETV’s StreamlineSC, check with your media specialist or Instructional Technologist about signing up for your own account.)

Web Site

Math Lab Web site at http://www.manatee.k12.fl.us/sites/elementary/palmasola/mathlabtutstat1.htm

What do you do when someone asks you to find the range, median, and mode of a set of numbers? This Web site contains interactive math activities to help you with these skills.

Materials

Post-it notes (one for each student)
Markers
Handout for students to record data in the form of a tally chart (Activity Sheet 1)

Equipment

Television
Computer with Internet access
LCD projector

Prep for Teachers

Prior to teaching this lesson, bookmark the Web site used in the lesson on each computer in your classroom. Also, load in any necessary plug-ins like Shockwave, available at http://www.macromedia.com, or Windows Media Player, available at the Microsoft.com Web site (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e0175119-9a5b-44c3-b1de-9b2a9aa6cff6&DisplayLang=en).
Make copies of Activity Sheet 1 for all the students.
When using media, provide students with a Focus for Media Interaction, a specific task to complete and/or information to identify during or after viewing of video segments, Web sites, or other multimedia elements.

Introductory Activity

Step 1: Give each student a post-it note and copy of Activity Sheet 1. Talk with students about what immediate family means. That means all the people that live in your household (this may take some clarification due to the fact that students come from divorced families, etc.). Students are to count the number of people that live in their primary household and record that number on a post-it.

Step 2: Draw a blank line plot on the board. Explain that a line plot is one way that we can use to display the data that we have collected. Ask students to tell you what number should be written on the line plot first. Students will probably respond with 0. Ask students if anyone has 0 people in their family? (What you want them to say is the smallest number of family members in the class—usually 2 or 3—because no one lives by himself or herself.) Explain that this is the minimum number. Ask students to tell you what number should be written on the other end of the line plot. (Students should tell you the largest number—this will vary from class to class.) Explain to students that this is the maximum number. Finish filling in the remainder of the line plot so that you have a complete line plot and are ready to fill in the data.

Step 3: Students will bring their post-it notes to the board and place them where they belong on the line plot. Once the line plot is complete and all the data is displayed, have students complete the activity sheet by completing the tally chart based on the information from the line plot. For example, if there are 3 students in the class who have 3 people in their family, students should draw 3 tally marks beside the number 3 on the tally chart. You may want to do this activity as a class if students are having difficulty individually.

Step 4: Once the tally chart has been completed, explain that the line plot and the tally chart are displaying the same information, just in a different format. Students will now complete the section on the handout where they have to find the range of the group of data. Explain that to determine the range of a group of data, you need to find the difference between the maximum and minimum. After finding the range, also discuss finding the mode. To find the mode, look for the number with the most tally marks or look on the line plot and find the number with the most post-it notes.

Step 5: Next students will find the “middle value” for family size. Remind students that the middle number is called the median. To help students find the median of the group of data, ask students to come up to the front and remove their post-it note. Next, have them physically arrange themselves in order from the minimum to the maximum number in a line in the front of the classroom. They should hold their post-it notes in front of them so they look like a “human line plot.” The only difference between the human line plot and the line plot on the board will be that students with the same number will be standing beside each other rather than in an actual line plot where they are stacked on top of each other. Once students are in the correct order, have the person on each end of the line plot sit down on the floor. This will be your maximum number and minimum number. Then have the next students on the end sit down on the floor. Continue to have students on both ends sit down until you are left with one student. This is your median, the number in the middle. If there are two middle numbers, the median number is the average of the two numbers.

Step 6: Students should go back to their desks. Students will take the information from their tally charts to practice finding the median just as you did with the whole class. Students should write all of the numbers in order in the space provided on their paper. For example if their chart looks like this:

Number of Family Members	Number of Students
3	IIII
4	II
5	III

They will write:

3,3,3,3,4,4,5,5,5

Then students should mark off the number on both ends until they reach the median number. Students should get the same answer as the answer you got as a whole class.

Step 7: Students will fill in the remainder of their handout by answering the following questions about the class data:

What is the maximum number of people in a family?
What is the minimum number of people in a family?
What is the range?
What is the mode?
What is the median?

Learning Activities

Step 1: Explain to your students that they will be examining the concept of data collection even further by watching a video clip from the ITV series Mathica’s Mathshop. Provide your students with a Focus for Media Interaction, asking your students to determine which superhero can lift the most weight. PLAYthe “Reading Graphs” clip until the question Who Can Lift the Most Weight? appears on the screen. PAUSEclip directly after the question so there is a clear view of the bar graph. Check for student comprehension. (Paul Henry is the correct answer because he lifted 200 kg.)

Step 2: Leave this clip paused on this spot for the remainder of the lesson. Explain to the students that they will be answering more questions about this group of data. Begin your discussion by asking students to tell you what type of graph is used to display the data. (A bar graph) Ask students to tell you what information or data is displayed on this bar graph. (The amount of weight that each of four superheroes can lift)

Tell students that they will use the information from this graph to answer some questions much like they did when they answered questions about their class family members’ line plot. Ask students the following questions based on this graph:

What is the minimum number of weight that was lifted? (Paul Bunyan lifted the minimum amount of weight with 125 kg.)
What is the maximum amount of weight that was lifted? (200 kg.)
What is the mode for this group of data? (There isn’t a mode because no number occurs more than once.)
What is the range for this group of data? (200 kg.–125 kg. = 75 kg.)
What is the median for this group of data? (Since you will be left with two numbers, you will need to show students how to find the average of 175 and 150. The median is 162.5 kg.)

Culminating Activity

Step 1: Tell your students that they will now have the opportunity to explore a variety of data collection problems to determine the range, mode, and median by using some an interactive Web site. Have your students log onto the Math Lab Web site at http://www.manatee.k12.fl.us/sites/elementary/palmasola/mathlabtutstat1.htm. Provide your students with a Focus for Media Interaction, asking your students to practice finding the median, range, and mode, and recording their score for each set. Students will have the opportunity to answer five practice problems for each skill, for a total of 15 practice problems. After students complete the problems, discuss what difficulties the students are still having (if any) with finding range, median, and mode.

Step 2 Review with students all of the ways they used data collection skills throughout this lesson. As an assessment, ask each student to collect data on the number of hours they watch television in one week. Students will need to write down the total number of hours they spend watching TV each day for seven days. Once they have collected this data, they will create a line plot and find the range, median, and mode for their data. Students will have two weeks to complete this project.

Cross-Curricular Extensions

Language Arts: Invite another class to collect data on how many members are in their family. Compare the family-size data from your class with those of another class. Write a summary of the results including descriptions of how the maximum, minimum, range, median, and mode for family size compares in each class.

Challenge students to think about other ways we use the word median in our language. Have students write other definitions for the word median. For example, the median on the highway, the mediator of an argument or discussion, etc.

Science: Use data from a current unit of study in science to show students that data collection can be used in all subject areas not just mathematics. Use the data in science to find the range, median, and mode.

Community Connections

Invite a coach from the local middle or high school to come talk with your students about how they use statistics and data collection on a daily basis to determine averages, scores, etc.

Student Materials

"Family Size" worksheet (See Activity Sheet 1.)