Category: View from the Classroom

Educators do not receive enough attention for the amazing feats they pull off each day in their classrooms. Take a peek into the classrooms of teachers who are weaving data literacy into their instruction in interesting ways.

Rural Math Teacher Uses Real-World Data to Promote Equity

Nate Sebold Champions Authentic Data to Surface Social Justice Issues and Boost Inclusion

One of the things Putney, Vermont, teacher Nate Sebold loves about middle school students is that they are full of questions. He considers it his job to “harness” those questions and give kids the tools they need to answer them. For Sebold, that means having students interact with data.   

“How to interpret data, how to question data sources, how to investigate data – these are increasingly important for today’s 13-year olds.  Data is going to be such a huge part of their lives,” said Sebold.  

According to Sebold, contrived data won’t cut it. He prefers to use real-world data. His reasons are twofold: social justice and classroom inclusivity.  

Surfacing Social Justice Issues with Data

Sebold experienced an aha moment at a National Council of Teachers of Mathematics conference.  The presenter pointed out that teachers make a choice when they place a graph in front of students. The graph can be about something socially relevant, or not.  Since then Sebold selects data carefully with an eye to surfacing important social justice issues. For example, Sebold regularly uses the Tuva activity Incomes of Men and Women in the US: Comparing Groups with Box Plots. Sebold said that introducing relevant data, like this dataset, in the classroom creates a space for students to ask questions and increases classroom dialogue.  

Boosting Inclusion by Helping Student Connect Personally to Data

Another advantage of real-world data, Sebold said, is that it benefits students with learning differences.

Before taking the job at Putney Central School in 2022, Sebold spent a number of years as math department head at the Greenwood School, a small college preparatory school for students with learning differences. He and his science colleague noticed a real difference in conceptual understanding of data when students had collected it themselves.

“When they would sort it… they would say, ‘there’s my point in the midst of all the others!’  The data meant something.”

Sebold explained that when students saw that the graphs were not just randomly created, but made up of points of data they had collected, it helped them comprehend that all graphs are made up of individual data points. Data visualizations became more concrete.

In one project, Sebold’s students entered their own demographic data into Tuva. Sebold notes students’ comprehension of graphs increases when they help with the data collection process.

“When we pulled the data up on Tuva, they would try to find their own response, their data point.  Then, when they would sort it or organize it, they would say, ‘there’s my point in the midst of all the others!’  The data meant something,” Sebold said.

Inspired? Surface social justice with these resources.
Tuva Lessons and Datasets About Current Social Issues

Starting the Year with Data Literacy

Science Teacher Margo Murphy Does Science From Day One

When most people think “back to school,” it conjures images of students seated at a desk, their heads bent over their computers and papers. In Margo Murphy’s Earth Systems Science classroom, though, “back to school” has a different meaning.  Murphy jumps right into doing science. That means the first days back find her students outside in their Rockport, Maine schoolyard collecting data.

At first, the content of the investigation doesn’t matter; what matters is if observational data can be gathered to answer the question. Each group picks a question that sparks their interest.  For logistical purposes, Murphy limits them questions they can answer on campus. For example, one group of students might be measuring the length of white pine needles to see how variable they are while another is documenting the brands, models and colors of vehicles in the school parking lot. The purpose?

“It gives kids the idea that you can have highly variable data but still see trends,” Murphy explained. This is fundamental in her Earth Systems course, she elaborated. “You are going to have messy data if you are going to work in the earth sciences.” Murphy and her Earth Systems colleagues at Camden Hills Regional High School consider data literacy so essential to the earth sciences that they devote a significant portion of the first quarter helping their students master it. 

“They don’t have to focus on getting it ‘right’ the first time, so they can iterate.”

Once students have collected data, they upload their data on Tuva and begin to explore it. Murphy’s students always enjoy the “playground aspect” of Tuva, being able to bring data in and look at it in a variety of ways. To capitalize on this engagement, Murphy builds in time for her students to “play”. 

“[With Tuva] they don’t have to focus on getting it ‘right’ the first time, so they can iterate,” Murphy said. 

Murphy scaffolds learning using Tuva’s graph choice chart.

As students are becoming conversant with analyzing complex data, Murphy scaffolds the learning process using Tuva resources like the graph choice chart. 

The time and energy devoted to data literacy pays dividends later in her course as students grapple with complex earth systems core ideas such as weather and climate, topics which Murphy considers vitally important.    

Two scatter plot graphs showing a strong correlation between CFC levels and ozone hole area.
Murphy introduces data skills early, preparing students to apply them to projects like this one later in the course.

“I want kids to understand that there is change on the planet, that this change is rapid, and how they can find evidence and understand that evidence to understand these changes and ask good questions.”