How Do You Spend Your Time: Cellphone, Facebook, Internet, Studying

Submitted by: Shawn Marsh
School: Highland Springs High School

Summary

By the end of the lesson, students will be able to analyze data and determine how they spend their time and whether they spend it wisely, based on three different measures of “center” – the mean, median and mode. Students interact with the material in a variety of ways that cater to different learning styles. A grab back activity has the students up and manipulating themselves to physically see the material. Then students compile information and use available tools to determine mode, median and mean. Students also use a variety of familiar graphs to visualize their data and then create a “rap” to help others understand the terms needed to understand mean, median and mode.

TIPC Ratings

Developing – The lesson is structured to lead students to an understanding of a difficult concept. Students are given the information, become the information and manipulate, formulate and evaluate their findings. Score could be increased if students researched pre-existing data and compared that to their findings.

Developing – Students work in small, teacher created groups to create and evaluate data. Communication is limited to in-class oral discussion. Score could be increased if students created and compiled data from an online poll of students. They could also reach out into the community to research the topic. They could also use google docs or another blogging source to discuss their findings.

Target – Throughout this lesson students are presented with problems that need to be solved and that require them to think beyond just applying the proper formulas. This lesson allows the students to apply the formula to a real world situation and then take those findings to have a serious discussion that could improve their own lives. Score could be increased if students were to continue the conversation in a digital format and reached out for other opinions.

Approaching – The lesson is designed to ensure that all students can understand the material regardless of their learning styles. The lesson clearly follows a pattern that leads the students to a better understanding of the concepts and how those concepts can be used in real life. Score could be increased if the solutions or findings from the research were compiled into a product that could then be shared with others.