Find something that interests your students, or something that is topical in the news or the community, and collect some data about it as a class. Read the section “Question a day”.

Place the data in the following Printable Master sheets, Printable Master - Tables - Two & Three columns

Making links to events / issues in the newspaper and community always makes the maths seem more authentic. If you can find something a little controversial so that students are genuinely interested in the outcome, engagement is likely to be maximized.

This displays the Getting started on page 328.

This activity could lead on to your discussing interesting topics for surveys that relate to your class.

This displays two photos.

Students are asked to come up with three different questions they could ask about these pictures, identify what data they would collect and explain how they would measure it.

Example:

Number of eggs laid by each chicken

Number of live chicks hatched

Mass of the eggs

This displays the Enquiry Cycle for you to discuss.

Make sure students understand why the arrows are double headed.

The next page of the shows the diagram with more arrows added. Students are asked what they mean.

This displays a checklist you can print for students to use to check that they have done each step as they carry out their survey.