Nicholas R. Perrone
This unit reaches mathematics curriculum goals for intermediate elementary-grade level students. The unit is an interdisciplinary approach that connects graphical analysis with other curriculum areas including health, science, and educational technology. It should take at least one month so that students are afforded enough time to collect, graph, and properly analyze their own sets of data.
In the unit, students will take a proactive role in collecting data, entering the data into a computer spreadsheet program, creating pictorial representations, and analyzing the data based on the various representations made by the class. The students will create appropriate graphs and/or charts to show the school-wide data over the course of the unit. Since the data will be collected on physical activity, the goal is to encourage the participating classes to compete with one another. This competition will determine which class completes the most amount of physical activity during the unit. The participating students will display the data on a bulletin board where the rest of the school may view it. If portable, this board will be sufficient for a science fair or other science-related activity.
(Developed for Mathematics and Technology, grade 3; recommended for Mathematics, grade 3)
