Year 5 Exploring Census: Teaching Plan

A teaching plan covering all the statistics and probability achievement objectives – Beta testing version

Session 1: Introduction to data science and statistics

• Introduction to data science and statistics
• Finding out about Dollar Street, New Zealand Census, and CensusAtSchool websites

Session 2: What is a census?

• Understanding what a census is, in particular, what is the census of population and dwellings in New Zealand.
• Exploring migration and birthplace statistics from the 2018 census – connecting to Whakapapa me te whanaungatanga | Culture and identity from Aotearoa New Zealand histories curriculum

Session 3: Introduction to CensusAtSchool

• Familiarisation with the CensusAtSchool website
• Finding out about the CensusAtSchool databases by looking at the questionnaires and the metadata for different variables in the different databases
• Exploring data for the whole database

Session 4: Making measures

• Learning about survey questions, and how to plan to make measures consistently across New Zealand
• Making measures and preparing for data entry

Session 5: Doing the CensusAtSchool survey

• Finding out about the survey and how CensusAtSchool manages privacy
• Students enter their data into the online questionnaire
• Introduction to Common Online Data Analysis Platform – CODAP, a free browser-based statistical analysis tool

Session 6: Getting to know the class

• Learning about ethical considerations
• Making and describing data visualisations

Session 7: Creating survey questions

• Using the context analysis tool to identify ideas to explore
• Interrogate chosen ideas as to the suitability, especially ethics
• Developing survey questions to collect the data

Session 8: Data collection methods

• Making predictions (Pets data)
• Collecting data using data cards (Pets data)
• Exploring data collection methods (getting to know the class)
• Collecting their own data for their survey questions (getting to know the class)
• Reflecting on data collection methods
• Creating a “rectangular” spreadsheet of their data (getting to know the class)

Session 9: Exploring the class data using CODAP

• Making data visualisations – using data cards and CODAP
• Writing about data visualisations – using “I notice…” statements

Session 10: Sharing findings and critiquing findings of others

• Preparing findings for sharing with others
• Sharing their findings
• Critiquing the findings of others

Session 11: CensusAtSchool class data

• Posing investigative questions from our class CensusAtSchool data
• Making and describing data displays
• Answering our investigative questions – conclusion

Session 12: How do we compare with other students of a similar age?

• Posing investigative questions about another group from CensusAtSchool – similar age
• Downloading data from CensusAtSchool to use
• Making and describing data displays
• Communicating findings

Session 13: Introduction to probability

• Exploring words used to describe probability
• Exploring chance statements in stories

Session 14: Dice misconceptions

• Exploring claims about dice with probability experiments

Sessions 15-16: Biased bingo

• Exploring probability beyond coin tossing and dice rolling
• Exploring a probability activity where the theoretical probability of a certain outcome can be calculated

Session 17: Fair spinners

• Use spinners to conduct probability experiments.
• Compare probabilities from experiments with what is expected in theory
• Use technology to do many repeats of a probability experiment

Session 18: Blog post for an external audience

• Students are communicating findings to an external audience
• Using technology to communicate findings