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Arnold experience with Is Pluto A Planet  

This post was edited by Kit Pavlekovsky on Aug, 2012
As I wanted to have an opportunity to review the Excell techinques I tried to teach with the Shout Out Loud lessons. I chose to use the data collected by Nick under the "Is Pluto A Planet" link.

I provided my students the data in excel and the article in word to read. I set them off on a week long task to analyze the data, make a decision if pluto is a planet and then create and present a 2 -4 slide power point that would convince people of their decision. I then spent 1 class period having them present thier power points.

A couple things I would note:

- of the excell tasks I presented with the shout out loud data, most students were able to transfer the skill of graphing and ordering of data to the Pluto spread sheet. However the skills of filtering and especially doing computations needed some re-teaching.

- Giving them this assignment gave me a chance to work with the students that had more trouble and also to ask the class experts to pitch in to help. As they most were able to work independantly.

- The biggest hurdle was deciding what data to analyze and how to make a convincing argument with it. Students gravitated (pun intended) to the terms and quantities they were most familiar with. For instance most students chose to make an argument based on diameter, rather than looking at orbital inclination or orbital excentricity, even though the data in the later 2 sets would support their conclusions better. I feel next time I present this I need to do more background setting.

- Students were not swayed by professional opinions. Equal numbers felt that pluto was a planet.

- Having them produce a power point not only gave me a opporutnity to show them how to use the tool (and how to import graphs and data from excel), which they picked up very quickly, it gave them a firm goal and deliverable which helped me keep them on task. (This is taught as part of my "skills" class which is not graded other than pass/fail.)

I have a couple examples of the power points at the following url

teacherweb.com/MA/FrederickWHartnettMiddleSchool/MrKalmbach-7thGradeMath/photo7.stm

Near the bottom of the listed files are 2 powerpoints presentation. One that was based on presenting the data graphically and the other using a table of calculated values.

Z-YA

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Arnold, I learned so many ideas after reading your implementation stories. What I planned to do next is to try doing one of the EET Chapters. If this won't work, I planned to implement the Pluto- Is it Planet? Now, I realize some things I need to consider before doing the lesson with my students.

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