Objectives
This unit is designed around the eighth grade math Common Core standards involving statistics and functions. By examining data through various lenses, students will become critical consumers of information and see the flexibility of mathematics to be used, in both honest and purposely misleading ways, as evidence to sway audiences who are expected to take the message at face value. They will also learn multiple ways to represent data for different purposes for their own presentations. Students have a solid foundation in understanding and representing linear relationships, so we will learn about nonlinear functions and determine when to use different representations of data, including graphs, tables, equations, and written descriptions.
Writing standards are also addressed as students research and develop their solutions to persuade their audiences to act on their findings. This will connect to the different representations of data, in that students will use mathematical evidence to persuade; they will need to represent data accurately, but in a convincing way. This will provide further opportunity for questioning as students consider the data from multiple perspectives and try to gauge reactions from broad audiences.
The Standards for Mathematical Practice will be a mainstay throughout every piece of the unit, and will connect the disciplines of math, science, research and writing to help students see the importance of critical thinking and questioning when consuming, synthesizing, and communicating data to solve problems. All eight practices will be used throughout the unit, and I will be explicitly teaching and bringing out examples of students employing them to help students build awareness of their metacognition.
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