This post was edited by Kit Pavlekovsky on Aug, 2012
Attached here is a power point with the steps to my lesson.

The data can be found at my web site handouts page
teacherweb.com/MA/FrederickWHartnettMiddleSchool/MrKalmbach-7thGradeMath/photo7.stm

There are 2 files
1- raw data
2- is an example that 2 of my students created (we are about 1/2 way thru the lessons at this point)

The attached power point is more of an overview of the tasks that I want the students to perform rather than step by step instructions. I am teaching by showing an example then walking thru an example with everyone and then turning them loose to do the rest of the peices.

Let me know what you think.

(I don't know if I will have time tomorrow (Wed.) to check posts but I will be back on Thursday.

Z-YA;

arnold

Arnold, This is a great way to tap into the energy of your kids while collecting and analyzing data. I have one question: Do you start the activity by asking a few questions? (Which word is loudest? Which gender is loudest?) I see the questions embedded within the PowerPoint.Maybe you start with them?

I start off by discussing how you measure how loud things are and with a discussion of what makes up sound and how it can be described in different ways using mathmatical terms. The school has a very strong music program and so this fits well into many students strengths. (frequency - relates to pitch, volume to sound pressure levels etc.)

I then do talk with them about what kinds of words can be said loudly. And the list of words to test is generated by the students. (Along the way of the analysis I do pose them the questions about which word on average measures louder and why and which person measures loud and why..)

I had been toying with idea of having them use instruments to make the sounds rather than shouting, but the shouting is a great ice breaker.

Arnold, this is awesome. I really like what the students created from the raw data. It was interesting to see the data compiled per student. Although the same words tend to be able to be shouted more loudly, clearly some students are also louder than others. I bet the students enjoyed looking at the data this way. Is your class really only 11 students, or is there more data?

No while I had all students record their data and asked them to have it for class the next day so we could write up a consolidated class list not all of them had it the next day in class. As this is part of my starting school and setting rules I used this to make the point that if you don't have the materials you need or that I ask you to have in class, at class time, we jsut marched on with what we had.

The class is actually 23 students, and when we go to the computer lab they each have a computer.

Z-YA;

Arnold

Sorry it took so long to get back to you.