In context: review, new ideas, norms, and inquiry

Learning in context.  Answering questions based on our collected data.

How might we review what we already know and build upon it at the same time?  And, how are we teaching our learners about the social norms and the sociomathematical norms in the context of our community?

I love it when co-learning happens.  Kristi Story (@kstorysquared) facilitated another great lesson in statistics with our 6th graders this morning.  Our learners collected data to investigate statistical questions and distribution of data in terms of shape, center, and spread.

Collecting data (love this organization):

  • I usually spend about _____ MINUTES taking a shower or bath.
  • There is a total of _____ LETTERS in my first, middle, and last names.
  • There are _____ PEOPLE living in my home.

Collaboratively analyzing the data:

  • Data sets were collected for each question.
  • Each group was given one set of the collected data to organize and analyze.

Establishing both social and sociomathematical norms in context.

  • What if we collect data to answer statistical questions?
  • What if we grow as a community to continue to embrace a norm of challenging and questioning each other?
  • How might we take messy data and organize it?
  • How will we summarize the data to communicate center, shape, and spread?
  • How might we show what we know in more than one way?
  • What if we organize collected data and discuss the distribution of data in terms of center, shape, and spread?

Learners were not told to answer the above questions.  The questions and the necessary answers came up organically as the learners grappled with the data.

My Learning

I joined the group working on minutes taking a shower.  Here’s what it looked like.

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Here’s my messy attempt to organize and analyze the collected data.

We could compute the landmark data points.  We could quickly represent the data as a dot plot.  What happens when or if we want to represent the data using a box plot? I really didn’t know how to draw a box plot of this data since the median=Q3.

What can we learn by using technology to aid in the visualization process?


What if we leverage technology to show us more than we might see when we graph by hand?

What if we are intentional in our commitment to #AskDontTell inquiry approach to learning? How might we continue to teach the norm of challenging and questioning? What if we learn about and practice both social norms and sociomathematical norms in context as we learn in grow together?

Norms and Mathematical Proficiency.” Teaching Children Mathematics. National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Aug. 2013. Web. 31 Aug. 2015.

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