STEW STatistics Education Web – Statistical Literacy resources
Following the GAISE Report in the United States, the American Statistical Association (ASA) has provided teachers with peer reviewed lesson plans for teaching Probability and Statistics at all levels.
The STatistics Education Web, STEW, website lists the appropriate year level (beginning with K-Kindergarten age through to Year 12), and the content focus of lessons.
Resources that could be useful for teaching Statistical Literacy (AS 2.11 & 3.12) include:
Are Female Hurricanes Deadlier than Male Hurricanes? and What Percent of the Continental US is Within One Mile of a Road? These resources could support student learning identified by the 2015 NZQA Examiner: “Candidates needed to take more care with presenting any confidence intervals used as part of their answer, and should use appropriate notation and the percentage symbol, for example (55.8%, 62.2%). Candidates also needed to explain what the confidence interval means and its implication back to the target population (the inference).”
How Wet is the Earth? and Who Sends the Most Text Messages?
These two resources could support student learning identified by the 2015 NZQA Examiner: “Understanding of sampling variability was not well demonstrated by candidates, with candidates commenting on the variability within a sample, rather than the variability of sample estimate(s). At this level, by quantifying the margin of error using the 1/root(n) rule of thumb, candidates should focus on the size of the sample and its effect on the expected variation of sample estimates.
10,000 Steps? and Consuming Cola These learning experiences support student ability to distinguish between different study designs, specifically observational studies and experiments.
It’s Elemental! Sampling from the Periodic Table and Sampling in Archaeology – These resources may support student learning that the NZQA 2015 examiner identified: “Candidates were not prepared to use knowledge from across the statistical investigations achievement objectives of the Statistics curriculum up to and including Level 7. For example, it was expected that candidates are familiar with a range of sampling methods. Many candidates confused cluster sampling with stratified sampling.”
The ASA runs an annual competition for teachers who wish to submit lesson plans, see competition details.
There are learning activities on each of the international Census at School websites. These ready-to-use activities designed by international teachers help students graph and analyze their own survey data and compare them with national and international results. You can adapt these international lesson plans for use with New Zealand Census at School data.
The lessons can be found at the following websites:
Australia: www.abs.gov.au/censusatschool
Canada: www.censusatschool.ca/learning-activities/
South Africa: censusatschool.com/en/links/49-sa
United Kingdom: www.censusatschool.org.uk/resources/data-handling
