Flow of Activities
Activity Explore everyday data
What is data?
Australian Curriculum Alignment
What's this about?
Data is all around us in our everyday life and even our own observations inform us.
Data can be presented to us as information in the form of numbers such as the time, date, car speed, temperature, or a train timetable. Data can be represented as symbols, such as weather icons, or presented visually as pictures or maps, or presented as text. Often data is presented using a combination of these such as when used to create an infographic.
We use the data to make decisions; Am I running late? What will I wear? How do I travel to a certain location? Should I eat this? What ingredients have been used to make this dish?
Learning tasks
- Display the word 'data'. Ask students the question, 'What do you think is meant by the word 'data'? Provide examples and guide discussion to point out that data comes in many forms and isn't always numbers or words. The light we see outside our window is data we observe and interpret to determine if it is day or night. Talk about something familiar to connect the term 'data' to things they know about, such as the weather. What data do we use to talk about the weather? Refer to a weather app and discuss how the data is represented on screen. What data would the app use?
- Use the 'What is Data' slide presentation to explain the term 'data':
- Data can be numbers, images, text or sound.
- When data is turned into information it can be used to make decisions.
- Text and number data can be collected.
- Data can be organised (put into groups) to make it meaningful.
- Provide each student with an 'About me' worksheet to record data about themselves, for example: name, age, hair colour, height, digital image and drawing of themselves, favourite pets, likes, dislikes, hobbies, number of brothers, number of sisters. Discuss ways to represent each type of data.
- Display the worksheets and use these to highlight and explain that all of this information (words, images, drawings, numbers) is data.
Lesson Ideas
Data collection and representation: What’s in your lunchbox?
The type of fruits and vegetables in school lunchboxes or those eaten at crunch and sip or fruit break time can provide a good source of data for a classroom investigation.
'What is Data'
Use this slide presentation to explain the term 'data'.
People Patterns
This activity is a simple whole-class game that can be used as the basis for an explicit learning episode about patterns.
Assessment
Suggested approaches may include
- worksheet; 'About me' data.
Activity Sort and present data
How does sorting data help us make sense of data?
Australian Curriculum Alignment
What's this about?
To make sense of data it needs to be sorted and organised.
Organising data requires students to look for common attributes such as colour when sorting fruit or by eye-colour. Once the data is sorted into categories it can be represented as pictures or blocks in a column.
The data can then be presented as a graph, such as a picture graph.
Learning tasks
- Refer to a data set that is unorganised, such as the display of the 'About me' worksheets suggested in the previous section. Ask questions like:
- What is the most common eye colour?
- What hobby is most common?
- How many people have more than four people in their family?
- As a result, students will begin to understand the need to sort and arrange the data to make sense of the data and answer these types of questions.
- Choose a question to answer and model how to sort and organise the data. As a class, create a table and systematically count up the items for each column. If choosing the question about families, discuss how to represent the data. What format can be used to present the data? Create a digital chart. Use a software program such as Kid Pix or a similar drawing program that enables you to create 'stamps' of objects so they can be repeated easily, deleted and arranged. Repeat the process to answer other questions of interest. Use a different format for presentation, for example, likes and dislikes may be presented as a T-chart. Ideally students progress to making their own charts using a computer and familiar software. In each case discuss the usefulness of the presentation and discuss patterns in data.
- Provide further opportunities to sort items such as attribute blocks, toys, construction blocks, or other similar objects. Discuss the attributes being sorted. Arrange the objects in columns, count each item in the column and give each a value. Make statements based on the sorted objects, giving reference to the most or least, and how much more of one object compared to another.
- Provide students with a series of picture and number patterns. Discuss the patterns and ask students to identify and describe the patterns. Ask students to continue the patterns.
Supporting Resources
Lesson Ideas
Organise data by classifying, grouping and sorting objects
To sort and classify familiar objects, students use computational thinking skills to organise data in a logical way.
Data collection and representation: What’s in your lunchbox?
The type of fruits and vegetables in school lunchboxes or those eaten at crunch and sip or fruit break time can provide a good source of data for a classroom investigation.
Assessment
Suggested approaches may include
- student-created patterns.
Activity Represent data in different ways
How can I represent data?
Australian Curriculum Alignment
What's this about?
In Digital Technologies, representing data refers to the way data is symbolised, visually treated or provided as audio.
For example, data about animals may be represented as images of each animal, emotions may be represented as emojis, weather data may be represented as icons for wind, rain or describing the amount of sunshine.
Learning tasks
- Learning tasks
- Provide opportunities for students to represent data using a relevant software such as Kid Pix or Paint, or a simple drawing app such as Draw and Tell or Drawing Pad.
- A relevant context could be to discuss feelings and emotions and integrate the use of emojis as a way to represent the types of emotions:
- angry, sad, happy, scared, excited.
- Record, sort and present numerical data.
- Read a text that has a range of animals or characters such as Green eggs and ham. Explain that we are going to collect data to see which animal appears most time in the story. Invite the students to listen to the story and respond each time an animal is named. Record the number, using pictures, tally marks and numbers. Discuss the different ways the data is represented.
| Mouse | Fox | Goat |
|
|
|
|
| |||| | ||| | || |
| MMMM | FFF | GG |
| 4 | 3 | 2 |
- Play the 'People pattern' game. Students are called by name to form a long line. Use student attributes to create a pattern and invite students to guess the pattern, for example,:
boy, girl, boy, girl or
boy, boy, girl, boy, boy, girl. - Invite students to consider other ways to create people patterns, for example, brown hair, blonde hair.
- Create symbols or drawings to represent the people pattern. Encourage students to use symbols/images to demonstrate the pattern (eg blonde hair, brown hair, blonde hair).
- Invite students to create and follow patterns using kinaesthetic activities such as clapping, stomping, hopping or skipping. Symbols can be created to represent movements: hop, hop; jump, jump, jump; clap; repeat = HH; JJJ; C; R
Supporting Resources
Emoji time!
Access this site for documents and activities focussing on emojis and their use in to sharing feelings or messages.
Teachable Machine
Teach a machine using your camera, live in the browser. No coding required.
Lesson Ideas
Who lives in my house? *
Students learn data, data recording and data representation through the representation of different people and animals living in their house in numerical, tally and visual formats.
Data collection and representation: What’s in your lunchbox?
The type of fruits and vegetables in school lunchboxes or those eaten at crunch and sip or fruit break time can provide a good source of data for a classroom investigation.
Assessment
Suggested approaches may include
- ways data is represented using software and how it is presented in a chart.
Assessment Resources
Activity Collect Data
How can I collect and present my data?
Australian Curriculum Alignment
What's this about?
Presentation of data deals with the format in which it may be presented, such as in a table, T-chart or Y chart, a picture graph or bar graph.
Learning tasks
- Provide opportunities for students to collect class data to answer a question. Use a relevant context such as ways of getting to school, favourite food, favourite pet, or favourite book or TV character.
- Provide guidance and support to sort and arrange the data, selecting appropriate headings for tables.
- Discuss relevant ways to present the data, such as a chart. Ask students to discuss the usefulness of the method of presentation.
Lesson Ideas
Data Detective
These lesson ideas provide example teaching activities to assist students in exploring data, progressing from paper-based to digital solutions.
Fairytale Fun
A sequence of lessons for students to explore data within the theme of "Fairytales".
Data collection and representation: What’s in your lunchbox?
The type of fruits and vegetables in school lunchboxes or those eaten at crunch and sip or fruit break time can provide a good source of data for a classroom investigation.
Assessment
Suggested approaches may include
- ways data is represented using software and how it is presented in a chart
