Math that matters

 At the start of the school year, the first goal is to create a dynamic classroom community of students that support and know each other. One way to do that is to teach math lessons that matter--lessons that help students to know themselves and each other. 

One such lesson involves teaching students how to collect data that gives them a meaningful perspective about their lives and helps them to know each other too. 

First, ask students to privately answer the following questions:

• What activities are most meaningful to you in life?
• What activities do you spend the most time doing?

Then help students create an online or offline chart of the days in a week and the hours in a day. 

Next, ask students to complete the chart by stopping each hour to write down what they are doing during that hour.

At the end of the week, have students add up the time they spent on each activity, then make a bar graph of that data. Arrange the bar graphs from activities that they spent the most time on down to the activities they spent the least time on. 

Once that's complete, have students analyze the data with these questions:

• What three activities did you spend the most time on?
• What three activities did you spend the least time on?
• Does your data support your initial answer to the question, What activities do you spend the most time doing? Why or why not is this true?
• Do you believe you spend enough time on activities that are meaningful to you? 
• Why or why not? Will the data you collected and analyze lead to change in the way you spend your time? Why or why not? 
• Some people say, "You are what you do." Do you think this quote accurately reflects you? Why or why not?

Stay sensitive to students' privacy and engage in a conversation about the metrics collected and follow-up analysis. Discuss how good data collection can sometimes reveal a reality that we might not predict since so many of our beliefs are subject to our emotions, experiences, and memory. 

A good follow-up discussion or activity is to have students identify a goal they have, and then chart out their time/activity path to achieving that goal. 

Prior to doing this activity, you should try it yourself as it will help you to use your time better and teach the lesson better too. Onward.