In my class this week, we moved onto the next three learning goals which were all data-related. To introduce this task, students carried out the Skittles assignment. This assignment served as part review, part inquiry. Groups of students were given a bag of Skittles and they had to figure out part:whole ratios of the different colours found in the bags. Surprisingly, not all bags had the same amount of Skittles. This actually worked out well as it led into an impromptu discussion of mean, median and mode and production of Skittles.
After students calculated ratios and percents of the different colour they were now challenged to put this information into a circle graph. This led to great conversations about angles, degrees, circles and percent of a number. At the end of the assignment, we had many excellent circle graph and some sugar-high students :).
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