Old habits die hard, particularly when they are part of the unexamined norms of schooling. In "Why Are We Still Doing That?," the best-selling authors of "Total Participation Techniques" lead a teacher-positive, empathetic inquiry into 16 common educational practices that can undermine student learning: (1) Round robin reading;…

It is no easy feat to engage young people with abstract material as well as push them to greater depths of understanding. Add in the extra pressures of curriculum expectations and standards and the problem is exacerbated. Projects designed around standards and having multiple entry points clearly offer students the best opportunity to engage with…

Eliciting, responding to, and advancing students' mathematical thinking all lie at the heart of great teaching. In this article, the authors describe a formative assessment approach that teachers can use to learn more about their students' mathematical thinking and inform their instructional decisions. This assessment approach draws on a widely…

Every day, students collect, organize, and analyze data to make decisions. In this data-driven world, people need to assess how much trust they can place in summary statistics. The results of every survey and the safety of every drug that undergoes a clinical trial depend on the correct application of appropriate statistics. Recognizing the…

What better way to interest students in mathematics than using a Super Bowl® commercial? A Prudential® insurance commercial aired during the Super Bowl in 2013 was the impetus for this lesson (see it here on You-Tube™: http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=IsNiKGMSHUQ). In the commercial, four hundred people were polled on "How Old Is the Oldest…

Reasoning about and making sense of statistics and probability are essential to students' future success. This volume belongs to a series that supports National Council of Teachers of Mathematics' (NCTM's) "Focus in High School Mathematics: Reasoning and Sense Making" by providing additional guidance for making reasoning and sense making part of…

Discusses the use of glyphs, which are pictorial shorthand, to communicate data. Incorporates graphs and Venn diagrams. (MKR)

Presents an outdoor activity requiring students to collect data and suggests some possible applications of the data. (ASK)

Describes data analysis activities for grades three to four and five to six based on popular television commercials. Includes reproducible student worksheets. (MKR)

Describes a school project to choose a mascot in which students learned about sampling and polls while collecting, organizing, and analyzing data. (MKR)

Presents an activity to help students overcome mathematics anxiety by collecting and organizing data through summarization and graphic representation. (MKR)

Presents an activity involving students in a research project with pictures like those commonly found in elementary school mathematics textbooks and workbooks to sharpen student appreciation of the need for standardized methods of data collection. Illustrates that several different interpretations of the operations of addition and subtraction are…

Students in grades three to four can collect, analyze, and represent data in order to determine which piece of playground equipment appears most popular. Students in grades five to six can investigate the geometry of playground structures using measurement and scale models. Lesson plans and reproducible worksheets are included. (CMS)

Presents an activity in which students gather and analyze data involving the compatibility of human blood types. Uses student surveys, Venn diagrams, and random numbers. Includes activity sheets. (Author/NB)

Presents an investigation to engage students in real-life, open-ended data analysis. Allows students to analyze existing data along with data that they collect. Lists steps, necessary materials, and includes activity sheets. (Author/NB)