Bivariate Day 2 – Limbo!

Today was the true kick-off!  We played the limbo song, we gave the students lei’s to wear during class, and they got to do the limbo!  We heard comments all day long from “Are we doing math?”, “Why are we doing this?” to “This will be easy for short people!”, “Can we do that again?”, and tons of cheering and smiling!  It was a great experience to be able to introduce students to a difficult concept with something fun and they knew the correlation even if they did not call it a correlation.

Immediately after we did the limbo and they entered their data into the Numbers file that was set up prior to the lesson, we sat them down and I asked, “Why do you think some students were able to do more limbos than others?” and the answers flew out of their mouths, “flexibility” and “height”!  We then discussed which would be easier to measure right now and then they each got to measure their heights in centimeters and added that to the same Numbers file.

Before we showed them the graph, we discussed how we could represent this data (graph), what are we comparing (limbos/height), and then we asked them which one was independent and dependent.  This sparked the most conversation since they have not been exposed to those terms.  They had to think about it both ways (does height depend on limbos or does limbos depend on height).  Once we decided which was which, then they had to figure out which of those became the x-axis and y-axis for our graph.  Then they predicted how our data would look.

Lastly, we showed them the graph and had a long conversation about that data.  We talked about what the “line” meant, how it is what is expected.  Students then discussed why some students were further away from the line and what that meant, what kind of person are they (tall, but flexible).  We even discussed the principle (he had jumped into another class that was doing the same activity and limboed), we tried to estimate his height and then from our class data what would we expect him to do and then we told them what he did do!

As a wrap up and assessment, we asked them to think of two other variables that they could compare AND have a relationship. They had to add this to the eChalk class discussion board!  Little do they know that this could help them with their final project!

Tomorrow is the start of the self-paced learning!  Excited, but nervous all at the same time!  Have to let go control and help guide them into becoming life-long learners!

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