Room to Learn: Telling the Story of Australia’s Classrooms
You and your class can choose which questions you want to answer for the national data collection. Choose as many or as few as you find relevant and interesting.
Lead-up ideas
The theme of Reach for the Stars in 2011 is ‘Room to Learn: Telling the Story of Australia’s Classrooms’. Discuss the national activity - this could be led by a group of students who have had the opportunity to explore the website and/or associated documents.
Discuss measurement
- Degree of accuracy needed.
- Limitations of using human body parts for measurement (e.g. hands for horses).
Discuss data collection
- Sample versus census.
- Talk about ways to record and represent data (e.g. tally marks, in a table, frequency tables, histograms, bar graphs, stem and leaf plots, box and whisker plots).
- Statistical techniques for analysing data (e.g. measures of central tendency, measures of spread).
Generate some questions and make some estimates/ predictions about the answers. Here are a few ideas
- Estimate the answers to the core activity questions for your classroom.
- Estimate the possible ranges of the answers for the national data collection.
- Do you expect to see any differences in classrooms because of their geographical location? What kind of differences?
- What proportion of classrooms will have views of a predominantly natural landscape? Explain your reasoning.
Collecting and recording the data
Check with your Reach for the Stars coordinator about the format for reporting the results. There are class data record sheets available to download from the Core Activity page on the website.
Practicalities
Q5 - How many students (an arm’s width apart) fit around the inside edge (perimeter) of your classroom?
Define the perimeter of your classroom. How will the ‘ins and outs’ be dealt with?
Start at an easily identified place (e.g. the door jamb). The first student should stand with his or her back to the wall with the left side of the body lined up with the starting point. This student then extends his or her right arm out horizontally against the wall. The next student then takes up the position so that the extended arm is resting on his or her left shoulder. This continues until the students are standing around the designated edge one arm’s width apart (i.e. right arm out horizontally to the side touching the left shoulder of the next student).
It may be necessary for students to line up more than once.
Discuss what to do about ‘going around corners’ when using people as the measurement unit. What will you do if the last student overlaps the first?
Q6 - What is the perimeter of your classroom to the nearest metre?
What will be used to measure your classroom? Several groups could do the measurements then compare the results. Which result should be used? Maybe the average?
Q7 - How many students could stand on the classroom floor if the space was clear?
Encourage students to brainstorm several strategies. It would be very interesting to compare the results from the various methods and then discuss which is likely to be the most accurate. You will judge which method(s) you actually use.
The students could use the method of dividing the area of a student into the classroom area. How will the area of a student be established? What assumptions are being made? Are these assumptions realistic?
Students could model the area of a student onto pieces of paper and lay them out over a known area.
Students could try to ‘pack’ students into a known area and then multiply.
Q8 - What is the area of your classroom to the nearest square metre? This may be an opportunity to use compound shapes and make some comparisons using different shape divisions.
Q9 - How many years old is your classroom? Students might make a guess. How could the guesses be checked? Who would know?
Q10 - What is the main view from your classroom?
The class may wish to discuss what ‘main’ means and how many possible views there are from the classroom.
There is a choice of nine broad options; try to fit the answer into one of these options before selecting ‘other’. The concept of classification can be explored here. A single answer only is required and the students could discuss how to reach agreement (e.g. vote - but what happens if there is not a clear winner?)
Q11 - What is special about your classroom?
This may be one major feature expressed in a sentence, or several phrases about key aspects, or a collection of individual words. The specialness does not have to relate to the physical environment only. It may be that the classroom is special because of the people or the learning that takes place there. Or perhaps your classroom is special because it isn’t a traditional classroom.
There is a 20 word limit. Work out how the class will decide on the words/phrases/sentences. Random draw? Vote?
Other ideas
Expanding on the key ideas
When measuring for perimeter and area try using different instruments and compare the results. Which is the ‘best’ answer? How do you know it is ‘best’?
Sharing with others
In some schools it is possible to work with a younger class to work together in collecting and recording their data for the project. In previous years, many teachers have found Reach for the Stars a great opportunity to engage students in leadership and mentoring roles with younger learners undertaking the same activity.
Take photographs of your classroom to share with others in your school, or share them with Australia via the gallery on the National Literacy and Numeracy Week website. You could consider a foyer display, a presentation at assembly or an item in the school newsletter.
Perhaps a person from the local community to our school (an ex-student or teacher) could be invited to talk about their experiences at school. Students could plan specific
Questions related to the core investigation.
Investigating the national data
Once the data from hundred of classrooms has been collected and analysed it will be made available on the website. This will give you the opportunity to follow up on the core activity.
How many people were involved? How can you get a sense of the size of this number? What can you compare this number to?
What similarities are there between your class and/ or school data and the national data summary? What are the differences?
Check the predictions and estimates you made. How close were your estimates and how accurate your predictions? Did your results and/or the national data summary allow you to answer the questions you posed? Use some formal statistical measures to describe the data. What are some of the limitations of the data that was collected and reported? How reliable are your conclusions?