Back to School - Harnessing the power of data in the classroom!
It's Back to School time for 2025 and the beginning of the school year is a great chance to get to know your students! This fun and creative lesson idea combines getting to know your new class with elements of acquiring, representing and analysing data as well as classroom discussions around data privacy!
Our Project Officer, Celia Coffa, has highlighted this very popular activity from our Maths in Schools Professional online course for F-2 which can easily be adapted to all primary levels and run as a hands-on craft activity or by utilising online drawing tools.
The students create fun data monster representations of data about themselves. Each element (wheels, shape, arms) represents a piece of data. For example, the number of arms equals the number of pets.
Pose thought-provoking questions to your students:
- What data about yourself is okay to share with others?
- What data is unique to you?
- What personal data should not be displayed in the classroom?
After students create their monsters using whichever format is suitable (Craft, drawing, online tools), display the monsters and discuss the types of questions they would like to ask about the data.
Pose additional questions:
- What do you notice about the data?
- What are some similarities and differences in the data?
- How can we sort the images to demonstrate similarities?
- How many students walk to school?
- Who has the most pets?
- What patterns can you see?
What data can you acquire from the class data monsters?
Students can acquire data from the class display. They can use tally marks, symbols, words, or numbers to record the data. Then decide how to display their data—as a table or graph. Use digital tools like the app 'Draw and Tell', Paint, Google Drawings, Google Slides, Keynote, or MS PowerPoint.
Finally, have each group share their graphical representations with the class and explain their findings, such as frequencies and distinctive features.
Pose final questions:
- What does the graph/table tell you? How do you know this?
- What questions do you have about the data?
- What are the similarities between the different graphical representations?
As you can see, this activity can be adapted in many ways to suit your students with reduced or increased complexity and makes a great hands-on craft activity for a class display that can create great classroom conversations for weeks to come.
Enrol in our Foundation - Year 2 Maths in Schools online course for more ideas and details on this activity.
This initiative is funded by the Australian Government Department of Education and is part of the Maths in Schools: Teaching and Learning Resources to Support Mathematics project.