Tutoring

DATA MANAGEMENT AND PROBABILITY

COLLECTING, ORGANIZING AND ANALYZING DATA

Practice For this activity, you will need a container of different types of objects (a box of pennies or buttons work really well). The more objects there are, the better this activity will work. Also, try to find objects that are different in a lot of ways (the more they are different, the more ways there are to sort them). Simply pour out all of the objects and ask your child to sort them. Encourage your child to sort them in as many different ways as possible.

Practice For this activity, you will need a container of different types of objects (a box of pennies or buttons work really well). In front of your child, sort the objects in one way. (e.g., all the buttons with 2 holes in one pile, all the buttons with 3 holes in another, all the buttons with 4 holes in another, and so on…) See if your child can figure out how you sorted the objects.

Practice With your child, look in the newspaper and see if you can find some graphs. What kinds of graphs are they? What are they measuring? You may have to explain the graphs in very simple terms.

CONCLUDING AND REPORTING

Probability

With your child, talk about the meanings of these words: likely, unlike, often, sometimes, and never. Together, look these words up in the dictionary. If your child is new to using a dictionary, now would be a great time to show them how a dictionary works! You may have to explain to your child what these words mean. Sometimes, it helps to give your child examples of what each means (e.g., “It never snows during the month of August because it is too hot.”). Make sure your child understands these words by getting her to tell you what they mean in her own words.

Practice Ask your child to explain the meanings of these words to another family member or a friend. Is that person able to understand what your child is trying to say?

After you have reviewed these words with your child for a few nights, give them an oral test. For example, ask, “What does never mean? Can you think of something that never happens?”

Review with your child the meanings of these words: sometimes, often, never, likely, unlikely. Ask your child to draw pictures of things that likely/sometimes/often/never happen.

Practice For this activity, you will need a die. If you are not able to use dice, take six pieces of paper. Try to make the papers the same size. On the pieces of paper, write the number 1-6 (one number per paper). Place the six pieces in a box.

On a piece of paper, write the numbers 1-6. Take turns with your child to roll the die. If it lands on the number 1, 2, or 3, you get a point. If it lands on the number 4, 5, or 6, you get a point. Play the game for a while. Ask your child, “Is this game fair?” Your child should say that yes, it is fair. She may have a harder time explaining why. There is no one specific “right” answer at this point. In fact, most children at this age will probably have a hard time giving the scientific explanation. Children at this stage will probably just have a “feeling.” Listen to what they have to say and help them to say what it is they are thinking. They may surprise you! Here is one answer that a child has told me: “The die can land on any side. Three of the sides are mine and three are yours. It’s fair because we both own the same number of sides.”

After you have done this activity, change the rules of the games. Tell her that if the die lands on the number 1, she gets a point. If the die lands on the number 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6, you get a point. Ask her who they think is going to win (they should say you). Play this game for a few minutes to see if her guess was right (she may not be having a lot of fun right now!). Next, change the rules so that if the die lands on number 1, you (the adult) get a point. If the die lands on 2,3,4,5 or 6, she gets a point. Ask her who she thinks will win now. Play the game for a while to see if her guess was right. Ask her, “Is this way of playing fair?” With your child, talk about why it is not fair this time.

Practice For this activity, you will need 2 dice. If you are not able to use dice, take six pieces of paper. Try to make the papers the same size. On the pieces of paper, write the number 1-6 (one number per paper). Take 6 more pieces of paper. Write the numbers 1-6 on the papers (one per square). Place the 12 pieces in a box. (You should have two pieces of paper with “1”’s written on them, 2 pieces of paper with “2”’s written on them, etc.

On a big sheet of paper, write the numbers 2-12. Leave space beside each number to write checkmarks. Roll the dice. Ask your child to find the result (e.g., 6). Write a checkmark beside the number (e.g., write a checkmark beside the six). Keep on rolling the dice and writing the checkmarks (e.g., if you roll the dice six times, you should have six checkmarks). Tell them that they have to roll the dice and get checkmarks as they can. The game is over, however, when they have a checkmark beside each number from 2-12 (i.e., they have rolled a 2, a 3, a 4, etc.) How many checkmarks were they able to get? Write this number down so that you can remember it.

Next, look at the numbers that got the most checkmarks. Which ones were they? (It shoud be 6, 7 and 8.) Which numbers got the least checkmarks? (It should be 2 and 12.) Why did this happen? See if your child can guess. (Answer: there are only two ways to get a “2” – 1 and 1. There are only 2 ways to get a “12” – a 6 and a 6. However, there are lots of ways to roll a 7 – 1 and6, 2 and 5, 3 and 4, 4 and 3, 5 and 2, 6 and 1.

Play this game another night with your child. Help them to remember how many checkmarks they were able to get the last time. Can they get more checkmarks this time? After the game is over, look and see which numbers got the most checkmarks.

BARGRAPHS Graphs must be neat and easy to understand. Review the different parts of the graph with your child ,abels, title, x-axis, y-axis, data.
On a sheet of paper, ask your child to make a bar-graph with the using the following data:

Favourite Colours of Room 435
6 children liked blue
4 children liked orange
2 children liked red
8 children liked green

After you and your child have made the graph, talk about it. How many children liked red/blue/orange/green? How many children were in Room 435? How many more children liked green that orange? How many more children liked blue than red?

Your child should be able to answer a lot of these questions: we have made graphs and talked about them a lot in class.

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