Eye to Eye

Students learn to pose mathematical questions about themselves and their surroundings through class. They gather data about eye color from their classmates and another class within their school. They organize this data to answer questions.  This lesson is an excellent way for the students to make self-connections. They are using information that is important to them to form class data that can be referred to throughout the rest of the year.

Weblink address (URL): 
Eye to Eye

Standards & Objectives

Learning objectives: 

Students will:

  • Formulate questions that can be addressed with data.
  • Collect, organize, and display relevant data to answer questions.
  • Analyze data to answer questions.
  • Develop an understanding of the purpose of data collection and the use of data.
Essential and guiding questions: 

During the first part of this lesson: 

What did we find out from our data?

The most common color for our class is blue.

What questions could we not answer with the data collected?

How many girls have green eyes?

After the data has been collected from the other class: 

Did the data collected match the question asked?

[Responses will depend upon the actual data.]

What color was the most common for their class?

[Responses will depend upon the actual data.]

Does the data from our partner class match the data collected for the most common color from our class?

[Responses will depend upon the actual data.]

If there are (#) students in our school, how many students do you think have (the most common color) eyes?

[Responses will depend upon the actual data.]

Lesson Variations

Blooms taxonomy level: 
Analyzing
Extension suggestions: 

Look up a site that contains an illustrated picture of the human eye. Share different terms and research for more information about the parts of the eye.

Have students look up the most common eye color.

Give students blank bar graphs or circle graphs (with appropriate labels) and ask them to represent the data collected in the alternate format. Have students compare the different types of graphs.

References

Contributors: 
Angela Hamilton
Originator: 
Ayers Institute for Learning & Innovation