General Education Activity | STEM Career Connection: Sports Statistician
Standards: 2007 MN Math 5.2.1.1, 2019 MN Science 3.2.1.1
How do organizations build successful teams? This activity lets students gather and analyze data to build a Teacher Dream Team.
Materials
Predict
How do you think football teams choose their players? This introduction to the player combine features videos and Minnesota Vikings stats.
Plan: Teacher Dream Team
- Ask students to identify what qualities make a good teacher.
- How could we measure those qualities?
- How could we make a “Dream Team” of teachers?
Play: Teacher Combine
- Brainstorm with students about the activities teachers need to do quickly.
- Examples: How many pencils can your teacher sharpen in 30 seconds? How fast can your teacher hand out papers?
- Collect or create your own data from other teachers to see statistics.
- Have students create visual representations of the data.
- Create a bar chart of the number of pencils each teacher can sharpen in 30 seconds.
- Have students go around the room, gallery walk-style, comparing the different results and creating their “ideal” teacher team considering each teacher’s specialties.
- Present students with the “Teacher Challenges.” Did students make a team of teachers that can meet the needs of the challenge?
- Example: Your team needs to be able to sharpen at least 15 pencils and hand out 40 papers in 30 seconds.
Ponder
- These are silly challenges that don’t really tell you if someone would be a good teacher. What are some things you can’t measure that good teachers need? What are some things you can’t measure that good players need?
- Why might collecting data help you make good choices?
- Does data always show the full picture? What things might not be able to be measured with data that might go into making a good decision?
- SEL Connection: Why is having all available information important? Example: both perspectives during a conflict.
Extension
- Brainstorm school choices that could be helped with data collection. Make a list of the possible data points and choose one choice to follow through with as a class. (Example: Best school lunch. Questions: How many kids choose lunch on those days? What’s the average time for a student to finish lunch? How much of the lunch gets thrown away?)
- SEL Connection: Read How to Lose All Your Friends by Nancy Carlson. What combine activities could you create to identify a good friend?
