Brooke’s Reflection

I really liked the idea behind our exploration. It is a project that is very helpful when introducing statistical data strategies to secondary grade students. Our project enables the students to feel involved due to the fact that they collected their own data. They know that the numbers are actually representing something and not just randomly retrieved from a book. I think a big part in being a successful teacher is to engage the students and keep their interests in the subject matter.

I enjoyed using a software program that I had never used before. Fathom2 was very practical for our project. It allowed us to engage the students and then have them explore and manipulate their own data to learn about the line of least squares. After installing and learning how to use the Fathom2 program and all of it attributes, my partner and I decided we wanted to do a project using this software. We then had to come up with an idea of what we should focus on. After creating surveys as a class and then individually, we knew we wanted to use a survey in our project in order to provide some hands on time for the class. We then wanted to relate it to everyday life, so we decided to find the line of least squares. There are many applications in life that use this to predict future outcomes for data.

This project made me realize the amount of thought and time that teachers put in to create lessons when they are not taught straight from a text book. In this day and age, the use of technology is becoming more and more common in today’s classrooms. It is very important for teachers to be up to date with this and use it often in the classroom. I hope to one day use this lesson in my classroom and I hope you are able to do the same. Thanks!

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