Day 149 MAD Continued & Year in Review

6th Grade Math Standards: 6.SP.5 Summarize numerical data sets in relation to their context, such as by: a. Reporting the number of observations. b. Describing the nature of the attribute under investigation, including how it was measured and its units of measurement. c. Giving quantitative measures of center (median and/or mean) and variability (interquartile range and/or mean absolute deviation), as well as describing any overall pattern and any striking deviations from the overall pattern with reference to the context in which the data were gathered. d. Relating the choice of measures of center and variability to the shape of the data distribution and the context in which the data were gathered.

Quote of the Day: "How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." - Anne Frank

Question from Yesterday (as always from a student): "If the data set is all number one through five and then there are three 25's is the 25 an outlier or no because there are three of them?"

"Do we include a number as part of the mean absolute deviation if it is zero away from the mean?"

The Learning Objective: Find the mean absolute deviation; solve expressions that feature absolute value brackets; reflect a point across an axis in the coordinate plane; simplify expressions by combining like terms

Assessment: The clickers were brought in in the second class to assess every learning objective above besides the mean absolute deviation. For mean absolute deviation, it was assessed by circumventing the room as students worked to find how many moons each planet had. The students seemed to grasp the idea with the notes that were given to them as a reference.

Agenda:

1. Jumpstart asking students how many paperclips could be chained in 24 hours if 1 paperclip was chained every four seconds
2. Thumbs up/Thumbs down practice on mean absolute deviation (this is one of the most useful things I did in graduate school!) 
3. Mean absolute deviation practice in pairs
4. Jumpstart with reflections (this was a huge issue yesterday with clickers). Highlighters passed out so students would know which access was to be reflected.
5. Clickers assessing the reflection questions as well as questions about the other issues covered in today's objectives
6. Paper bag vocabulary. 30 seconds per person in groups. 1 minute per group on teacher to group questions. 10 seconds for a group member to draw a picture of the vocabulary term for their group before anyone could guess. 

Glass Half-Full: I came up with the last game of giving a student a word (such as inverse) to draw an example of on the board and that person's group had ten seconds to guess it on the fly. Once the ten seconds was up, anyone in the class could guess. It was very exciting and loud. I think the teachers next door would not have liked it as much.

Regrets: Mean absolute deviation is what it is. I was talking with a cousin who is a sixth grader in another district and she has no idea what mean absolute deviation is. In other words, she has not been taught that concept. It's pretty silly to ask sixth graders for this because it does not mean anything to them at this age, but I teach it cause of the standards. Teach might not even be the best word for it - gloss over it. For some students it's great, but then there are those students who are still struggling with division, so finding the mean is hard enough. I wish this standard was removed from the common core.

Link of the Day: Really cool idea for presentations that gives the audience a larger role. I'll be having the students present something probably a week from Friday.