Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Standard Deviation or Standard Division?!?!?

So we've been working in class on surveys and action research and we've started working on the data analysis today. The kids have already done mean, median and mode but I wanted to push them so I wanted them to actually find the standard deviation.
Just a quick definition standard deviation is the variance from the mean of the data. So I broke it down to six steps and for most of my classes these six steps weren't too hard, but were time consuming. However as I was going over the information one student looked up and said does that say standard division?
I was kind of taken aback, I double checked my powerpoint and no it said standard deviation, but the learner was convinced at first that it was standard division. I tried not to but I found this funny. I'm not sure if this was just the right time for it or what but it struck me at the time as funny. I played it off in class and we carried on. I enjoyed today, but my last class of the day struggled some. It's my lowest level of learners, but even in their struggles a few of my students in that class caught on and worked really hard and did very well. I had them use calculators and that extra help seemed to empower them to do their best.

more to come

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