Name Tag Lesson Plan

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Abstract

This lesson is designed to have students learn each other's names while introducing them to misleading graphs.

Standards (NCTM)

Data Analysis

Formulate questions that can be addressed with data and collect, organize, and display relevant data to answer them

• select, create, and use appropriate graphical representations of data, including histograms, box plots, and scatter plots.

Develop and evaluate inferences and predictions that are based on data

• use observations about differences between two or more samples to make conjectures about the populations from which the samples were taken;
• use conjectures to formulate new questions and plan new studies to answer them.

Student Prerequisites

• Technological:
  Students must be able to:
  • perform basic mouse manipulations such as point, click and drag.
  • use a browser such as Netscape for experimenting with the activities.

Teacher Preparation

Teacher will need a class roster.

Students will need:

• Access to a browser

Lesson Outline

1. Focus and Review
• Have the students introduce themselves to the class and say something interesting about themselves.
• Explain the rules of name tag.

2. Objectives
Students will learn their classmates' names and be introduced to misleading graphs.

3. Guided Practice
• Monitor the students playing name tag outside, while recording each time a student gets tagged.
• As a class, create a bar graph portraying the number of times each of the students got tagged.

4. Teacher Input
• Describe a scenario where Billy Bob is trying to recruit the fastest runner in our class.
• Tell the class that the recruiter is examining the graph you created in order to determine the fastest runner in the class.
• Discuss with the class why this graph does not necessarily display the data Billy Bob needs to determine the fastest runner in the class and why this graph might be misleading.

5. Independent Practice
• Have the students modify the graph with out changing the data to try to convince Billy Bob to recruit them.

6. Closure
• Discuss a few of the students graphs and what makes them misleading.
• Review what makes graphs misleading.
• Discuss how companies might use misleading graph to convince consumers to buy their products.

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