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Spring into Data Literacy
Author Information
* Name: Corianne Tatariw * Position: Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alabama * Contact: ctatariw [at] ua.edu
* Year contributed: 2021
Categories
- Grade Level: 6-12
- Alabama Course of Study: Data collection and analysis, environmental science
Abstract
The objective of this lesson is to help students develop basic skills in data collection, analysis and interpretation. The lesson (which can be broken up over days or weeks) has students collect categorical and numerical environmental data outdoors, which they then will graph in the classroom. They will then practice communication skills by writing a paragraph describing their findings and/or presenting a graph to the rest of the class.
The suggested data collection for the lesson plan is for students to use quadrats to collect data about dandelions growing in grass around school. However, this can be modified to collect any kind of controlled environmental data (including other weeds like clover or violets)– the goal is to teach them about data collection/ analysis and get them outside! In the fall, you can use quadrats to count the number of leaves per square meter. Any time of year, you can count the number of twigs and sticks on the ground.
