Choosing a Big Idea or Questions from the data

As a precursor to introducing the project and the survey data, I shared the results of a "getting to know you survey" that I had conducted the first week of school. Find the survey results HERE.

I had students look through the data and post their "wonderings" on a padlet (see below). Some of the questions were based on the data and some used the ideas in the data to spur new questions. 

We had a great discussion on how we can create questions without bias and, more importantly, if the questions may serve a purpose (other than mere curiosity). Following our conversation, I shared a PDF of the census at schools survey questions and had them post their wonderings on a new padlet. Some students came up with some intriguing questions to explore (e.g. does gender affect reaction time) and some were drawing blanks. I had the list of what I considered the more "meaty" survey questions (see previous post) to help prompt. 

The following is a list of student-generated questions (or big ideas) that they will be digging into over the next weeks. 

• Does geography (where we are born) affect the colour of our eyes?
• Does it take a shorter amount of time to get to school in 2014 then it did 10 years ago?
• Are more elementary kids choosing online communication (as opposed to person-to-person) to interact with their friends?
• Exploring local (St. Gabriel) and national opinions about why people bully.
• Does geography affect your height? Comparing heights of 10-year old boys in Canada, UK, and Japan.
• The languages we speak: is Canada really a bilingual nation?
• Are water bottles losing popularity?
• Dog or cat – which is the more popular pet?
• The popularity of Math (music, English) over the years
• In which season are the most babies born?
• How important is internet connectivity to elementary students?
• Investigating the effect of handedness and gender on reaction time.
• Do our breakfast choices follow the Canada Food Guide?
• Are Canadian girls taller than other girls around the world?
• Has the amount of Canadian children with allergies increased over the past 10 years?

Some students want to compare our school data to Canadian data. Some want to look at Canadian data over time, and some want to compare school data to international data. Some students are working independently and some are working in pairs (we have one group of 3).

Tomorrow, students will be developing their objective statements (basically a more detailed version of their question) and will be predicting what the data may look like for our school, Canada, and (if necessary) other countries. I plan to share the census at schools data with them on Monday.

Just as an aside, I am not formally teaching anything "data management" related leading up to this project. I want to see which learning objectives and big ideas the students will stumble across via their own learning. I will be tracking this as I observe it. Never having taught with this degree of student-centredness, I am finding it a bit frightening and liberating at the same time!

How is everyone else doing?