Activity outline for Fall 6th grade VR activity

1. Administer inquiry skills pre-test (45 minutes)

2. Administer probability/distributions pre-test (30 minutes)

3. Scouting (?) (60 minute pull-out for 2-4 students)

4. Initial discussion (60 minutes)

a. Scouting team gives initial report (15 minutes)

b. Establish the task (5 minutes)

c. Systematic investigation (20 minutes)

i. Avoiding duplicate counts (5 minutes)

ii. Coverage/completeness (15 minutes)

(a). algorithms (lawn mower)

(b). heuristics (lane widths, alignments, etc.)

d. Data collection (15 minutes)

i. What information to collect? (5 minutes)

ii. Vocabulary issues/drawing, etc. (5 minutes)

iii. Building a data table (5 minutes)

5. Exploration (pullouts in small groups over 2-3 days)

6. Follow-up activities (180 minutes)

a. Representing your distribution as a bar graph for comparison (20 m)

i. Review of qualitative bar graphs (5 minutes)

ii. Comparing bar graphs (5 minutes; have transparency examp.)

ii. Normalization (10 minutes)

b. Making & printing your bar graph (30 minutes; media center?)

everyone should make three copies.

c. Comparing bar graphs (30 minutes)

each group randomly chooses two other groups for comparison

each group works out a mathematical way of comparing

each group presents their mathematical method; we agree

as a class on one to adopt

d. Aggregation to obtain population distribution & printing of

aggregate transparencies (30 minutes)

e. Comparing your group to the population using the methods in c.

(5 minutes)

f. Which sector was the best predictor? (10 minutes)

g. Asymptotically approaching population distributions (30 minutes)

by building more and more partially-aggregated distributions

h. Reflections on lessons learned (15 minutes)

7. Self-assessment (15 minutes)

8. Probability/distributions post-test (30 minutes)