Reading a summary of this book, A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper , I thought that I would try some of the techniques in my Algebra 1, part 2 class. When we got to the statistics, I saw that the newspaper was an excellent source of very relevant data. The students were required to read a newspaper and gather some data that they found interesting. It could include any data, and these are a few of the topics that they worked with: sports, politics, health, fitness nutrition, and sales prices. We did stem-n-leaf plots, box-n-whisker plots, scatter plots and lines of best fit. We found mean, median, mode, range, upper and lower quartiles,. rates of change, and their final task was to verbally summarize as they went along.
The next time we do this activity, I will try to make time for oral presentations as well.
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5 comments:
Thanks for this activity--it is definitely something that I plan to try in my classroom! Newpapers are a great resource for the classroom. I definitely like the various activities that you shared!
pwr
What did your students think of the activity?
There is even a way to tie the newspaper into Algebra I Part I. In one of the first chapters, there are problems that have students find the change in daily closing prices of a company's stock price. My students and I had a discussion about the stock market and how these prices and changes are in the newspaper daily. In the future, I would like to actually bring some newspapers in my classroom and have my students complete some kind of activity with daily closing prices. It is a good way to see how integers and operations are used in the real world!
One of my colleagues shared with me a great newpaper worksheet she had used with her class. One of the questions asked the students to find five items they would consider purchasing and figure the sales taxfor each item in Lexington County. Another question asked the students to find 5 new cars advertised in the newspaper. The students were to figure the commission on each car sold if the sales person makes a 13% commission. What a great activity for teaching students to work with percents.
My students don't find the Newspaper to be that relevant.
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