15/09/07Simon Mills 2007 Does every tube of Smarties have the same number of each colour? The Learning Story behind Our ICT Mediated Investigation for Teachers TV Finally Published by Simon Mills 2007

15/09/07Simon Mills 2007 Session One We talked about frequency and what it means –Learning about Frequency in maths is about learning to use special tools to help us measure and record How often something happens How many times things can be seen or done. We talked about how ICT was a useful tool, for helping us to collect and present data We collected and recorded some data about sweets, using an ICT tool called a spreadsheet to help us create another tool called a frequency table.

15/09/07Simon Mills 2007 We made a frequency table using Excel tm We discussed whether there was anything special about the data we had collected, and whether our challenge was fair or not. We thought: Some people had less letters in their names Some people rushed Some people had smaller writing Some people started later than others because their pens didn’t work This could change how fair or unfair an investigation or experiment might be… Our first challenge How many times could we write our first names in a minute?

15/09/07Simon Mills 2007 The challenge was fairish because –we all were given the same amount of time – all had the same task –had the challenge to complete the task It could have been fairer if –We all had the same word to write –We All had equipment that worked at the beginning To be fair we needed to try to control the things that can change, just like in a science experiment. So Was our Challenge Fair?

15/09/07Simon Mills 2007 Mr Mills doesn’t think it is fair! He is sure… His favourite orange sweets are not so frequent in the tubes he buys as his other less favourite sweets. He always seems to get less of his favourite flavour than the others Our problem is to help find out if his fears are true.

15/09/07Simon Mills 2007 We sorted and counted the sweets in our tubes We created an Excel tm Workbook We entered the frequency of each colour in a frequency table we made in our workbook As we worked we began to talk about what we were seeing, and some of us had theories of our own. In our first session we were given a tube of his favourite sweets each.

15/09/07Simon Mills 2007 Columns? Some of us began by presenting our sorting and grouping in a really interesting way…. Why was it so interesting?

15/09/07Simon Mills 2007 In Session Two we talked about What frequency meant again We talked about some photographs of the way we had sorted our sweets for counting We talked about how one way of sorting our sweets might help us compare frequencies more easily They were like graphs. They were in columns, we could see how many more or less there were It would be less easy to loose count, when we worked out frequencies They were a bit like pictograms or block charts We compared our column chart sorting with bar charts, special tools for presenting frequencies.

15/09/07Simon Mills 2007 Columns? Why might these be such interesting and useful ways of sorting and presenting our frequencies?

15/09/07Simon Mills 2007 Charts SDM 2004

15/09/07Simon Mills 2007 Then We: Went back to Excel We learned how to use the chart wizard, to make bar and column charts from our frequency tables We went away in our pairs to present our data using the chart wizard.

15/09/07Simon Mills 2007 Some of us decided: It would be good if our bars and columns were the same colours as the sweets we had counted. It would make it easier for our readers to see which colour was which. It would be handy to have a title, this would Tell our readers what the chart was all about Help them to know how to read the chart Tell them what was going on with the information we were displaying. We learned how to do this, and by playing some of us even learned how to recolour other parts of our chart as well.

15/09/07Simon Mills 2007 As we were using the spreadsheet tools: Some of us helped other groups by showing and helping them to change their charts like we had done. Used the Interactive whiteboard, to model our new skills to the rest of the class We talked about what we were doing, and why we were doing it.

15/09/07Simon Mills 2007 Session 3 Titles and labels on a chart are really useful… Why? What makes a good title or label for a chart? What might these charts be about?

15/09/07Simon Mills 2007 Frequency table

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15/09/07Simon Mills 2007 pictogram

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15/09/07Simon Mills 2007 So does every tube of sweets have an equal frequency of each colour was Mr Mills right? Could he ever get the same number of each colour? ??*

15/09/07Simon Mills 2007 Where Might We Go Next Time?

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15/09/07Simon Mills 2007 Useful Interactive Teaching Resources for Data Handling Interactive Teaching Resources: This website is home to a collection of award winning software. I would recommend this whole suite of object based tools, to anyone using, Interactive whiteboards to teach primary mathematics. Many of the tools can be sampled online too.Interactive Teaching Resources National Primary Framework For Mathematics, an emerging collection of Excel, Flash and IWB Tool Suite Interactive Teaching Resources are available for use online or for download by following the breadcrumb trail, mathematics, planning, year group, resources.Interactive Teaching Resources