Teaching Intro Stats to Prospective Elementary School Teachers

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Teaching Intro Stats to Prospective Elementary
School Teachers

• The Habitat experience at East Tennessee State
  University (ETSU).
• Partially supported by the TBR-TPP grant
• Edith Seier Susan Hosler
• Department of Mathematics
• seier_at_etsu.edu
• http//www.etsu.edu/math/seier/seier.htm

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• This experience is part of an initiative across
  the state of Tennessee to improve the science and
  mathematics preparation of prospective elementary
  school teachers.
• Faculty from universities and community colleges
  of East Tennessee meet twice a year to share and
  discuss the work each of our institutions has
  done.

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• Probability Statistics at ETSU (Math 1530)
• The general intro-stat course at ETSU
• General education Mathematics requirement
• many sections with students from all majors
• common syllabus textbook
• common departmental final exam.
• Since Fall 2006
• a section by permit only for prospective
  elementary school teachers.
• Same content text book than the general course
• Same departmental final exam
• EDUCATION RELATED ACTIVITIES AND INFORMATION

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The Habitat

• Room where prospective elementary school teachers
  take most of their classes
• Instructor computer projector
• 20 laptops with internet access
• Manipulatives, calculators, poster boards,
  stickers, reaction-time rulers.
• Class notes, labs , data,. are posted in
  Blackboard
• 
  

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Goals of introducing added activities
information

• Create awareness among prospective teachers that
  Statistics and Probability ARE taught in the
  elementary school.
• Inform them about resources and the experiences
  of others
• Experience teaching strategies and tools in
  their OWN learning.
• Build stronger communication between Math Stat
  and Science courses (still in progress)

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1. Creating awareness

• Informing pre-service teachers about their own
  State standards for grades K-8
• Connecting the standards with the syllabus of the
  intro Stats course
• Reading about experiences and ideas of other
  school teachers about teaching these topics

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2. Inform them about resourcesa)The Resource Web
page

• A web page has been created with links to the
• Tennessee Standards GAISE, and different sites
  with resources for the teaching of Statistics
• http//www.etsu.edu/math/seier/teachers.htm

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b) Assigning readings

• Report form

• Readings from the Journal Teaching Statistics are
  assigned. Several are downloadable for free from
• the web page of the journal http//www.rsscse.org.
  uk/ts/
• the current publisher
• http//www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref
  0141-982Xsite1

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3. Experiencing strategies the use of tools

• Creating graphs with objects.
• Stickers and post-it-notes are used to make
  histograms, stem-and-leaf displays, scatter plots
  with their own data when these graphs are
  introduced for the first time.

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b) Using tools to generate data in class

• Reaction time ruler to generate data
• Experimenting with origami frogs (compare two
  folding patterns and sizes in terms of length of
  the jump, patterns available in the internet)
• Sum of two dice to show variability in results
  from random experiments and that probabilities
  only make sense in the VERY VERY LONG run.
• Class survey to generate data (also used in other
  sections)

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c)Posters Projects

• Students prepare one poster and one statistical
  project in groups of two outside class, for
  grade.
• We follow the definitions and instructions of the
  American Statistical Association competition
  for K-12 students.
• http//www.amstat.org/education/index.cfm?fuseacti
  onposter1
• The idea is that they apply what they learn and
  become familiar with a statistical activity they
  can do with their students.

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Posters

• Either
• they prepared a poster similar to those their
  future students will prepare
• Using already collected data
• Collecting their own data
• Prepared a poster on the teaching of statistics
  at the school level (new option in the Spring
  semester)

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Examples of posterswith data
published

own
published
own
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Posters on teaching
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Projects

• Projects start with a research question
• Students collect their own data through surveys
  or experimentation
• After they do the analysis they put the results
  on a poster board.

survey
experiment
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survey
experiment
experiment
survey
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• d) For topics that are taught only at the college
  level
• Labs for exploration/application using computers
• Worksheets, favoring group work with personal
  accountability
• Set of multiple choice questions to review a
  topic using a single story
• (these are activities we do for other sections of
  intro Stats also)

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In summary, we have added

• Information about standards and resources
  (available through web page)
• 4 special assignments (total points equivalent to
  1 partial exam) on top of the regular homework of
  the course.
• poster
• project
• Readings from journal Teaching Statistics
• Internet search on teaching statistics
• Hands on approach to teach the topics that are
  taught in the elementary school using stickers,
  post-it-notes, reaction time rulers, origami
  frogs, dice, spinners, etcetera.
• But they are still responsible for the regular
  content of a course at the college level.

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Response of the students

• What they enjoyed most in the course were the
  extra activities, especially
• reaction time ruler activities, posters, projects
• The performance in the final departmental exam is
  comparative to the other sections of the course
• We hope they will be better prepared to teach
  probability and statistics topics than if we had
  not included these activities

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Some questions/comments toward improvement

• More time? how?
• Encourage more sophisticated topics for posters
  and projects? Freedom vs list of
  topics-compromise pre-approval
• More frequent interaction/feedback with regard to
  posters projects
• More frequent reminders of the standards? The
  down side they might not feel like learning
  topics that are not in the K-8 standards.

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Future plans

• We are asking the faculty teaching science
  courses for pre-service teachers to propose
  simple research questions that could originate
  statistical projects. Projects seem to be the
  most natural bridge between the science and
  statistics courses. Those questions could be used
  with the students who do not come up with an
  interesting project idea on their own. After
  all, elementary school teachers need to teach
  both math and science.

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Exportability?

• Some community colleges in the area have showed
  interested in implementing something similar.
• Not always it is possible or not always it is
  considered convenient to have prospective
  elementary school teachers in one section.
  However
• Hands on activities can be used to engage all
  students.
• Students majoring in Education can be directed
  toward the resources web page
• In a general intro stats course assignments might
  be made to vary according to field of interest of
  the students, the ones mentioned here could be
  used for the education majors.