Data cards: Level 2

Session One

1. Show the following data card to the class and explain what a data card is, i.e. a piece of paper contains three pieces of information about one person.
   
2. Discuss the importance of knowing exactly what each piece of data is about. 
   What could “tūī” mean? What could “reading” mean? What could “Even date” mean?
3. Ask the class to tell you something about this student. 
   Does anyone in the class fit this data card?
   Do you know someone that fits this data card that is not in this class?
   How many different people could this data card be correct for?
4. Turn the data card over to reveal the name of someone familiar that fits this data card. The point to get across is that a data card could fit many people but each data card is about one person only.
5. Explain to the students that the way to view each piece of data is to see it as the answer to a data collection or survey question/pātai. Get them to suggest the data collection questions that give these three pieces of information. Discuss how some students could answer the same data collection question differently, e.g. “What type of native bird do you like?” A more specific data collection question is needed, e.g. “What type of native bird do you like best- pīwakawaka, tūī or kererū?
   What would a data card about you look like?
6. Hand out a data card to each student to fill out (Copymaster 2). Have each student write their name on the back of the data card hand and have a student collect these.
7. After this session the teacher needs to arrange the data cards onto pieces of paper and photocopy them. One set is made for each pair of students. Photocopying onto coloured paper is suggested to make it easy to recognise the class data set. The names of the students on the back of the data cards are not needed. This data set will be used during Session Three.

Session Two

1. Start the session by reminding the students about the data card they filled in during Session One. Select a data card one of the class filled out and read out the three pieces of data and ask the questions, “Whose data card could this one be?”, “Could it be anyone else in the class?”, “Could it be someone else in the school?”, “Could it be a teacher or other adult?” Repeat this several times.
2. Organise the students into pairs and hand out to each pair a set of Data Set One, Copymaster 1. Tell them this is a group of students from another school and get them to cut out all the data cards. Once the data cards are cut out, have the students sort and organise the data cards to find out things about this data set. Remind them we are interested in the group and not individual students.
3. At a suitable time, as the pairs of students are organising the data cards,  have the class stop and look at the different ways the data cards have been arranged. Briefly discuss the different ways, along with writing up or drawing the different ways on to the board for all students to see. The question “What is good about this way?” or “When would it be good to organise the cards like this?” could be asked.
   
4. Ask the following investigative questions and get each pair of students to organise the data cards into one of the above arrangements to show the answer.
   • Which native bird do students in the class like the best - pīwakawaka, tūī or kererū? Organise into rows.
   • What is the favourite subject in our class out of reading, writing and maths? Organise into columns.
   • Do more students have odd or even birthdates? Arrange into groups.
5. Have the students suggest similar investigative questions they could explore then encourage them to look at the data cards, organising and reorganising, to find out as much as they can about this group of students.
   Initially encourage the students to look at one category at a time then, encourage students to look for categories within other categories, e.g. What favourite subject (reading, writing or maths) is most popular with students who like tūī? 
6. Write on a large piece of paper what the class discovers or get each pair to write up what they find out about this group. Keep this information, as it can be used later to compare with other data sets.

Session Three

1. Explain to the class that today they will be sorting and arranging data cards, like Session Two, except they will be using the data cards they wrote about themselves. Before the copied data cards are handed out, discuss what the students expect to find out. 
   What do you think we will find out about our class?
   Will it be mainly different or similar to the group looked at in Session Two?
2. Hand out the copied data cards from Session One to each pair of students. The pairs are to cut out the data cards, sort them and organise them to look for other interesting things about the class.
3. The teacher is to move around getting each pair to explain and show what they have found out. The teacher is to encourage the pairs to add detail to their answers, moving students from, “Yes, there are more students who like tūī than pīwakawaka or kererū.” to “Yes, there are 10 more students who like tūī compared to the total of 8 students who like pīwakawaka and kererū.”
4. Conclude by considering the statements the students made at the start of the day and seeing how many were true and discussing other interesting things they found out about the class.

Session Four

Today the students, in pairs (tuakana/teina model could work well here), will design and collect their own data using data cards. Each pair of students needs to design three data collection questions to ask other students in the class. 

1. Discuss and brainstorm suitable data collection questions. Data collection questions for this activity need to be answered with either yes or no, or an option selected. Keep the optional answers to a maximum of three options.
   Sample data collection questions:
   • What is your favourite kai - pizza or burgers?
   • Have you ever caught a fish?
   • If you could choose, would you sing, dance or read a book?
   • Do you prefer to play at the beach or the river?
2. Once suitable data collection questions have been developed they are to be written onto a large data card.
   
3. Before starting to collect data each pair of students needs to write three investigative questions they could ask of the data they will collect and to make statements about what they expect to find out about the class for these investigative questions. Students should be encouraged to pose investigative questions about categories within categories, leading to statements about what they will find e.g. “People who like to read will select burgers as their favourite kai ” or “Most people surveyed will like  kererū”.
4. Each pair of students is to cut out enough blank data cards for the class and number them 1 to n (number in class). Once completed the pair of students are to ask half the students each, their three data collection questions and fill out a data card for each student. The student’s name needs to be written on the back to make sure all students are asked. They need to remember to complete their data cards for themselves as well.

Session Five

In pairs the students are to sort and organise their data cards to look for other interesting things about the class and to see if the statements they made about the class were correct.

After a set time each pair reports what they found out about the class. This could be in the form of a written report with some sentences about what they found out, a conference with their teacher or an oral presentation to the class.