Lesson 15

The purpose of this warm-up is to invite students to mathematize a situation as they notice and wonder about wild animals. Students analyze what they see and pose questions. The synthesis provides an opportunity for students to consider ways to collect and organize data. This leads into the next activity, in which students will collect, organize, and represent data from a survey question.

• Groups of 2
• Display the image.
• “What do you notice? What do you wonder?”
• 1 minute: quiet think time

• “Discuss your thinking with your partner.”
• 1 minute: partner discussion
• Share and record responses.

• Point to one question from students’ responses that can be answered by collecting data from the illustration. For example: How many of each animal are there? 
• “How can we use the picture to answer this question?” (Count the number of times we see each animal.)
• “What are some ways we can record this information?” (Make a list of each animal and write the number of times we see it.)
• “We’re going to continue thinking about wild animals in our first activity today.”

The purpose of this activity is for students to create survey questions and collect and represent the data. Students will use the data collected in this activity in the following one and in the Unit 2 culminating lesson.

• Groups of 2
• “What are some animals you might see in the wild?”
• Record student responses. Consider asking students to share what they know about some of the animals or sharing pictures of some different wild animals students might mention.
• “Today we will ask our classmates a question about animals, and record their responses. With your partner, choose a question you will ask your classmates. Then, pick three animals from our list that will be the choices in your survey. Circle the question and fill in the blanks with the three animals.”
• 2 minutes: partner work time

• “Decide how you will record the responses. Ask your partner the question and record the response in your workbook. Record your response to the question too." 
• 1 minute: partner work time
• “Now you will collect at least eight more responses from your classmates. With your partner, walk around the room to ask others your survey question and record their responses. Continue asking classmates until I say to stop.”
• 5 minutes: partner work time
• “Work with your partner to present your data in an organized way that makes it clear how many people picked each animal.”
• 5 minutes: partner work time
• Monitor for students who create clear representations of their data using drawings, tallies, or numbers.

• Display previously identified representations of data.
• “How is this data organized?”
• Consider asking:
  • “What makes this a good representation?”
  • “How are the representations similar or different?”

The purpose of this activity is for students to generate questions for their peers that can be answered using the collected data and representations from the previous activity.

• Students need access to the data they collected in the previous activity.

• Groups of 2
• Be sure students have access to the data they collected in the previous activity.
• “In the past few days we asked and answered different questions about data. What were some of these questions?” (If students have a hard time remembering, give them one example.)
• Record student responses. Make sure there are at least 3 questions.
  • How many students chose _____?
  • How many students chose _____ or _____?
  • How many students took the survey?
• “Think of two questions that you could ask about our data.”
• 2 minutes: quiet think time

• “Take turns with your partner asking and answering questions. Explain or show how you found your answer.”
• 5 minutes partner discussion

• “What questions were interesting to answer? What was interesting about them?”
• "What was the hardest/easiest question your partner asked? Why was it hard/easy to answer?"

The purpose of this activity is for students to share their findings from the data with their peers. In this activity, students will use data collected in Activity 1 and their analysis of the data from Activity 2 to decide what findings to share and make choices about how to represent them.

• Students need access to their data and questions from the previous activities.

• Groups of 2
• Give each group tools for creating a visual display and access to their data and questions from the previous activities.
• “Think of at least two things about your survey you want to share.”
• 1 minute: quiet think time
• 2 minutes: partner discussion
• If students need ideas, invite students to share some examples, such as:
  • how many people took your survey
  • a fact about how many _____
  • an interesting discovery you made

• “Make a poster to show what you learned about the class that you would like to share. Be sure you can describe what you include on your poster.”
• 10 minutes: partner work time
• Monitor for students who create clear representations using drawings, tallies, or numbers.
• Regroup pairs into groups of 4.
• “Take turns to show and present what you learned from your survey. Make sure to share the question you asked in your survey."

• “What is one thing you learned from the other pair’s survey?”
• “How does their poster help us see that?”