Guide Entry to 26.01.04
Representation takes on many meanings in this unit—statistically speaking, it refers both to those represented in a population sample as well as the ways in which students choose to represent the data in visual form to persuade the dissenting or apathetic population. Further, representation refers to the cultural relevance students will experience seeing themselves in young changemakers of the past, and in turn, envisioning themselves as the new kids who can investigate ideas and articulate their findings.
At the outset of the unit, the teacher will create a shared community experience as students engage in polling community members about prescribed topics. Students will follow a process through which they refine an investigative statistical question while grounding their knowledge of statistical terms and processes in experiential learning. Students will be presented with various representations of statistical data from freedom movements led by young people. Before diving into mathematical representations such as scatterplots and histograms, students will be presented with pictorial representations.
To conclude the unit, in keeping with the spirit of the Freedom Schools and community organizing principles, the teacher will model for students how to generate questions and help them determine routes of investigation. Students will then decide how to represent their data to change-makers and stakeholders visually, using traditional graphs and/or infographics, and in writing. The culminating activity aims to illustrate to students how representations of data can serve to legitimize the claims and concerns of young people who might otherwise be written off as idealistic and irrational.
(Developed for Algebra I and Math 8, grade 8)
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