Note: This webpage is mainly devoted to resources to be used in the classroom. Go to the Primary School Teachers page for resources mainly devoted to that group. Information and activities related to Children’s Censuses and similar activities are at census .

This page is a wiki page. If you have any resources you would like to add here, please do so. Please, contact the ISLP to get help.

THIS PAGE IS DIVIDED INTO TWO PARTS. THE FIRST PART DESCRIBES RESOURCES AVAILABLE ON THE INTERNET FOR FREE. THE SECOND PART DESCRIBE OTHER RESOURCES (BOTH FREE AND THOSE WITH A COST).

The BBC Bite size for Kids has a section on Data Handling with quizzes and activities on interpreting data, probability and the median and the mode. It is colorful and has audio, which may appeal to students. (Recommended by Maria Manuel da Silva Nascimento, of the University do Alto Douro, Portugal).

Biometria contais many exercises in statistics with special emphasis on applications to Biostatistics. This site is brazilian and it is in Portuguese.

This is an article from The Statistics Network Newsletter by Scott Grimshaw. It “describes how preschool children can begin to explore data gathering and other statistical concepts an, in the process, learn many other skills.” (Quote from the beginning of the article)

"Census 2002 is an activity-based series of lessons for Primary Schools. The aim of the series is to enable children to understand the importance of conducting a census and to develop the knowledge and skills that they will need to participate actively and responsibly in their own community. Lessons and activities are aimed at class levels from Infants to Sixth Class [ages 5 to 12].” (Copied from website.) The lessons are available both in PDF and HTML versions. It was developed by the Central Statistics Office of Ireland and is very user-friendly.

"The aim of the Royal Statistical Society Centre for Statistical Education is ‘To promote the improvement of statistical education, training and understanding at all ages’. Work to support this aim will be carried out in four main areas: (i) school and further education; (ii) higher education for all courses in which statistics is taught; (iii) continuing professional development including all who use statistics as part of their professional life; (iv) society as a whole.” (Quoted directly from webpage). This website is very comprehensive.

This activity was developed by Southwest Educational Developmental Laboratory. In it a local company wants to build a new facility. It has narrowed its possibilities to five cities but it will require some additional data to make its final decision. The company needs a prediction of the conditions at the chosen site in the year 2010, based on trends from the 1970, 1980, and 1990 censuses. The board of directors will receive recommendations and determine the final selection. Aimed at ages 10 to 17 and includes lesson plans and activities involving Statistics, Sampling, Data Interpretation, Estimation, and Pattern Prediction

This is a chapter in Show and Tell. Written by L. Dacey and R. Eston (2003): Representing and Communicating Mathematical Ideas in K–2 Classrooms written by the authors. This chapter, which is available on-line from the publisher, provides a description of how a teacher of 5-year and 6-year old children engaged her students in an investigation involving surveys. The description is accompanied by student work, providing a rich image of how a data investigation can be implemented in a primary grades classroom. The whole book includes descriptions of lessons involving a variety of topics to illustrate how representation and communication can be used in the primary grades mathematics classroom, although none of these other lesson descriptions are on line.

These are the curriculum guidelines developed by the American Statistical Education for statistical literacy at the primary and secondary levels. They are very comprehensive.

Estadistica Descritiva contains games, a dictionary of statistcs, cartoons, problems and exercises and interactive activities. All the problems are on descriptive statistics. This site is from Portugal and is in Portuguese.

Figure this! (In English) or Figure this! (In Spanish) is a joint project of the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Widmeyer Communications, and the Learning First Alliance. Figure This! targets primarily parents and families, to help them * become more involved in their child’s education in and out of school, * motivate them to pay attention to their child’s level of mathematical comprehension, and * encourage them to push for an increased emphasis on high-quality math in their child’s educational lives....The centerpiece of Figure This! is a series of engaging and challenging mathematical challenges that has been featured in a variety of media, including radio, television, print, and the Internet. (Quoted from the “Fact Sheet” webpage of the website). Even though this website was created for families with children aged 10-14, the activities there are truly fantastic and applicable to learners of all ages. A listing of the activities that have content related to Measurement, Data Analysis and Probability is on Page 3 of http://figurethis.org/pdf/tc/d-standards.pdf. A CD-Rom (Stock Number 12798) containing 80 activities (only some of which are statistics related) can be ordered from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics for US $15.00. To order go to http://my.nctm.org/ebusiness/ProductCatalog/product.aspx?ID=12798.

"Fun with Estimation" is a timed game developed by Mark Whitener that allows students to practice their estimation skills while shopping for groceries. Students work in cooperative groups and are in competition with each other. Aimed at ages 8 to 11 and includes lesson plans and activities.

Kids Count has data resources and analysis tools from US census data related to social justice issues such as children living in poverty; low birth rate; teens not attending school, not working;teen death by accident, homicide and suicide, etc. It is a great page for social studies classes and statistics classes that want to teach about the importance of social indicators. (Recommended by Mary Townsend of Statistics Canada).

M&M's website takes you to a map. You can then click on a country and get a webpage in a for various countries in many different languages. Once at the proper country/language, then click on “About M&Ms” and then click on “Products”)

M&Ms are small candy-coated chocolates of different colors that come in packets. From this particular page you can access information about the different types of M&M products (e.g., Milk Chocolate, Peanut, Crispy, and MINIs). The best bit about these pages is that they contain graphs showing the distribution of the colors of the candies in the different packages (yes, they vary between types: Milk Chocolate packets have 30% brown and 10% blue, while Peanut M&M packets average 20% of each). An obvious classroom lesson is to determine the proportions present in different packets and compare them with the manufacturer’s claims on this site. In addition to the color distribution data there is nutritional data (so you can discover that Peanut M&Ms have less sugar than the Milk Chocolate ones). This material could form the basis for lessons for various ages in the elementary school. [Because these pages are part of the M&M website bear in mind that there are advertisements and other distractions if you use this with students!]

The Math Forum is a leading center for mathematics and mathematics education on the Internet. The Math Forum’s mission is to provide resources, materials, activities, person-to-person interactions, and educational products and services that enrich and support teaching and learning in an increasingly technological world. Among the resources provided by The Math Forum, we found a vast collection of selected elementary school level lessons that teachers may use in their classroom. This collection can be found in the url given above. On this page we searched for those lessons that apply to statistics and probability for elementary level lessons. A brief description and the link are given for each one, cited from their website.

Adventures in Statistics is a Web unit preprint of a paper by teachers Tom Scavo and Byron Petraroja that describes a mathematics project involving fifth grade students and the area of classrooms, including measurement, graphing, computation, data analysis, and presentation of results; to appear in “Teaching Children Mathematics”. Aimed at ages 8 to 14 and includes lesson plans and activities.

Developed by Kent Anderson of SCORE Mathematics. After getting information from advertising statistics available on the Internet, students calculate percent increases (or decreases) for the top 25 companies in terms of advertising dollars spent during a year. At the end of the activity students will have reviewed some percent concepts and computation skills, and will have discovered the enormous amount of money large companies spend on advertising. Aligned to the California Mathematics Standards. From the Schools of California Online Resources for Educators SCORE Mathematics Lessons. Aimed at ages 10 to 13 and includes lesson plans and activities.

Developed by faculty at Germantown Academy. Spurred by an orthopedic surgeon’s report recommending how much weight a person should carry, teams of fifth and twelfth graders examined student backpack weights in relation to body weights in all three divisions of their school, weighing over 800 students and their backpacks and analyzing the data by gender, grade, and school division, using the Minitab statistics software package. The collaborative study includes rationale, hypotheses (predictions), methods (including explanation of boxplots), statistical results, analysis of the data, interviews (of administrators and nurse), and the student teams’ recommendations for a healthy back. The site also offers related links about backpack weight and health concerns, and a “Backpack Rap.”. Includes lesson plans and activities.

Developed by Jan Rottner of SCORE Mathematics. Students collect statistics about 2-4 famous bridges to use in calculating geometric computations of area, and parallel and intersecting lines. Compare your results using less than, greater than or equal to skills. Extensions include exploring other Web sites to see student works and illustrations, projects done with toothpicks and other materials to build bridges, and more. Aligned to the California State Standards. From the Schools of California Online Resources for Educators SCORE Mathematics Lessons. Aimed at ages 9 to 12 and includes lesson plans and activities.

Developed by Bayonne, New Jersey Board of Education (USA) - 5th Grade Teachers. A collaborative math project to determine whether the number of chocolate chips in Chips Ahoy cookies is the same everywhere. Classes may submit data, and results will be posted November 30, 2000. Site includes: lesson plans that use statistics to analyze number of chips and percentage of chocolate, with directions, data sheets, and evaluation rubrics; related science, social studies, and language arts activities; no-bake recipes; and appropriate New Jersey standards. Aimed at ages 11 to 14 and includes educational tools/objects, lesson plans, activities, and Internet-based projects.

Developed by Debbie Ballard. Students are asked to predict how many centimeters they think their height, size of foot, and circumference of a circle measure. After they measure and compare their prediction, students are asked to estimate the size for a giants’ height, foot and circumference would be. Then, predictions are made as to how many footsteps it would take a giant to arrive to different locations. Finally, students are asked to write a story. Aimed at ages 6 to 8 and includes lesson plans and activities.

The Middle Years Numeracy Research Project (Stage 2) has been commissioned by the Victorian Department of Education, Employment and Training (DEET), the Catholic Education Commission of Victoria (CECV) and the Association of Independent Schools of Victoria (AISV). Although this website deals with more than statistiscal literacy in contains many things relevant to statistical literacy.

The NCTM Illuminations (huge) website is designed to illuminate a new vision for school mathematics as presented in NCTM’s Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (2000). Each grade band (preK-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12, and across the grades) contains five sections: I-Math Investigations of ready-to-use interactive multimedia lessons; selected web resources of the best carefully reviewed Internet math resources found by their panel; Internet-Based lesson plans of classroom-ready lessons developed by expert teachers; Interactive Mathlets of java applets that can be used to explore mathematics and to create interactive lessons; and, Inquiry on Practice of video vignettes, research reports, and article for teachers to encourage thinking and discussion on teaching and learning. The site is devoted to all of mathematics, so there is some searching to be done to find items specifically dedicated to statistics. It is well worth the search.

The PBS TeacherSource This is a general website with many resources for all areas of mathematics and statistics. Once you are on the main page, choose an age level and then choose a topic. The statistical literacy activities are found under both “Data Analysis” and under “Statistics & Probability”.

A teacher training resource written by the Virginia Department of Education. This document introduces a staff development program designed to assist teachers in implementing the 2001 Virginia Standards of Learning for mathematics, and enhancing teachers’ content knowledge and their use of instructional strategies for teaching the probability and statistics Standards of Learning. Included in this document are a sample of meaningful and engaging explorations, problem solving, and hands-on experiences correlated to the probability and statistics strand of the grades K-5 and grades 6-8. These activities include instructional and implementation strategies for teachers, as well as training in ways to gather, represent, analyze and interpret data to guide instruction and classroom assessment.

Pumpking Exploration Developed by Southwest Educational Developmental Laboratory. In this activity students in cooperative groups search, suggest, question, predict, and estimate the number of seeds in a set of pumpkins. They will combine mathematical procedures and scientific observation to learn more about this seasonal delight. Includes lesson plans and activities.

ASA materials . “ASA has ... written materials to help elementary and secondary school teachers make statistics more accessible to students. This document contains descriptions of materials and publications available for use in workshops for teachers and in classrooms.... [The Quantitative Literacy materials were] written by members of the ASA-NCTM Joint Committee on the Curriculum in Statistics and Probability and funded in part by NSF, this material features topics, techniques, and activities that involve students with real data. Topics covered include exploratory data analysis, with an emphasis on graphical techniques, elementary probability, simulation of random events, and an introduction to random sampling and confidence interval estimation.” (extracted from webpage). Although most of these materials were designed for primary and secondary levels, they can be used effectively at the post-secondary and adult learner levels as well.

Schools' Corner was developed by Statistics New Zealand. Schools´ Corner covers a wide range of learning programs. There are separate pages for primary and secondary level. The pages have parts for student use and part of teacher use, including copies of newsletters called StatZing! (which is published quarterly and distributed to every school in New Zealand).

On the website, click on "Current Issue". (Note: If this gives you the wrong issue, then click on “Previous Issues” and then choose “Number 68...” This is an issue of The Statistics Teacher Network newsletter devoted entirely to implementation of the American Statistical Association’s “A Curriculum Framework for Pre K-12 Statistics Education”. It was written by Christine Franklin & Gary Kader. In this article they explain the guidelines and give example activities.

http://www.statcan.ca/english/edu/index.htm (in English) http://www.statcan.ca/francais/edu/index_f.htm (in French) These websites support education in Canada by developing and offering specifically designed statistical products and services and a wide range of learning resources. This includes a Kids’ Zone, the educational research tool E-STAT (see below), the Data Liberation Initiative, a listserv where teachers can talk with each other, and an “Ask an Expert” section for students, plus more. Materials are available for students, teachers and researchers.

The Statistics Teacher Network's web site contains many of the articles, reviews, etc. from the last 23 years of the Newsletter. They are not sorted by grade/age level. But, many of the activities suggested in the newsletter are appropriate for the primary level.

Usage and Interpretation of Graphs was developed by Gary Malsam. Students are asked to predict how many shoe eyelets are in the classroom without looking at the other students’ shoes! Depending on the number of eyelets they predict, they must elaborate a graph of the size that is appropriate to their prediction. Students’ predictions are summarized in a global graph. Discussions and conclusions are made with the information from the graph. Aimed at ages 8 to 12 and includes lesson plans and activities.

ISBN 0-86651-750-2 Published by Dale Seymour Publications (Palo Alto, California, USA) for the American Statistical Association, 1994, 64 pages (Note: Dale Seymour Publications is now part of Pearson Learning Group) Price: US $ 13.95

“Explains why and how statistics should be taught in grades K-12. Includes general teaching principles and objectives, plus 28 activities that promote hands-on data collecting and interpretation. Encourage students to evaluate and communicate possible solutions rather than strive for “right” answers. Extension and assessment ideas and guidance for developing other activities are provided.” (Copied from description on Pearson Learning Group webpage). The activities are excellent and range in level from age 5 to adult.

ISBN 0-924886-03-X Published by University of California, Berkeley, Lawrence Hall of Science (Berkeley, California, USA), 1998, 108 Pages, US $13.50

This very impressive book has many wonderful activities. All are ready for class use. There is also an Instructor’s Guide on how to use the activities included with it.

Published by Dale Seymour Publications, Palo Alto, California, USA), 1997. (Note: Dale Seymour Publications is now part of Pearson Learning Group) Teacher’s Edition, ISBN 1-57232-638-7 ( ISBN 13: 978-1-57232-638-5), 140 Pages, US $16.50. Student Edition, ISBN 1-57232-637-9 ISBN 13: 978-1-57232-637-8), 72 Pages, US $5.95

This book is part of the textbook series called Connected Mathematics Project. It is well-written and fun. It is activity-based and students of all levels seem to enjoy it and learn from it. Aimed at ages 11 to 14.

ISBN 0873533186 Publisher: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, (NCTM), Reston, Virginia, USA, 1992, 48 pages, US$ 13.95 Can be ordered on the Internet at http://my.nctm.org/eBusiness/ProductCatalog/product.aspx?ID=449

This 48-page book is one of the “Addenda” to the NCTM (1989) Curriculum Standards for School Mathematics. It is intended to exemplify the sprit of the original “standards” documents produced by the council. Each of the seven chapters provides vivid descriptions of classroom investigations, one for each grade. Each chapter has a number of smaller activities that make up the investigation. While the main narrative is written to the teacher, each chapter includes master copies of student pages, assessment suggestions and follow-up questions and explorations for further investigations involving data.

This is a series of books “that translates the NCTM’s Principles and Standards for School Mathematics into action, highlights major mathematics content areas and makes classroom-friendly in grade-band specific volumes..... CD-Roms feature interactive electronic activities, master copies of handouts, and additional readings.” The volumes related to statistical literacy are called either Navigating through Data Analysis and Probability, Navigating through Probability, Navigating through Data Analysis, or Navigating through Measurement. For more information see http://www.nctm.org/standards/navigations.htm.

Published from 1982 to the present by Dale Seymour Publications (now part of Pearson Learning of Parsippany, New Jersey USA) for the ASA (American Statistical Association)-NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics) Joint Committee on the Curriculum in Statistics and Probability. This is actual several series of textbooks aimed at students from ages 5 to 18. “ASA has ... written materials to help elementary and secondary school teachers make statistics more accessible to students. This document contains descriptions of materials and publications available for use in workshops for teachers and in classrooms.... [The Quantitative Literacy materials were] written by members of the ASA-NCTM Joint Committee on the Curriculum in Statistics and Probability and funded in part by NSF, this material features topics, techniques, and activities that involve students with real data. Topics covered include exploratory data analysis, with an emphasis on graphical techniques, elementary probability, simulation of random events, and an introduction to random sampling and confidence interval estimation.” (extracted from webpage). Although most of these materials were designed for primary and secondary levels, they can be used effectively at the post-secondary and adult learner levels as well. For more information see http://plgcatalog.pearson.com/program_listing.cfm?site_id=2&discipline_id=806&subarea_id=943

Published by Continental Press (Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, USA) Student Books are 52-64 pages and cost US$ 7.95 for 1-4 copies and US$ 4.95 for 5 or more copies Teacher’s Guides are 16-20 pages and cost US$ 3.15

These 7 books (one for each grade/age level from 7 year olds (Grade 2–called Level AA in the series) to 13 year olds (Grade 8–called Level F in the series) include a variety of graphical techniques, including scatterplots and stem-and-leaf displays (at the higher age levels). “With Tables & Graphs you can teach students to read, interpret and make tables and graphs - essential skills in today’s information-rich environment. Lesson clusters introduce each format, provide practice interpreting and evaluating data, and conclude with an opportunity to create that type of table or graph.” (Copied from publisher’s website). For more information, see http://www.continentalpress.com/series_detail.asp?intSeriesID=1010&intSubjectID=21.

ISBN: 0-86651-952-1 Published by Dale Seymour Publications (Palo Alto, California, USA), 1997, 113 Pages, US $18.50. (Note: Dale Seymour Publications is now part of the Pearson Learning Group) To order online: http://www.pearsonlearning.com/. To order by mail, telephone, or fax in the USA: Pearson Learning Group, 135 South Mount Zion Road, P.O. Box 2500, Lebanon IN 46052 Telephone: 1-800-526-9907 Fax: 1-800-393-3156. For information on ordering by mail, telephone, or fax outside of the USA go to http://www.pearsonlearning.com/sls_rep/international.cfm.

This 8” x 11.5” soft cover book is designed as a teacher resource for use in the classroom. There are three sections, each comprising five investigations that are designed to progress from a focus on data collection to prediction with statistics. The development of the activities was supported by the National Science Foundation, and thus have been heavily field tested and found to be realistic and interesting to students in grades 3-6. Topics for investigation include “How Do We Spend our Time?” “What Do We Think about School Issues?” and “Can We Predict the Number of Seeds in a Pumpkin?” Each activity provides extensive implementation support, helpful hints concerning both content and teaching, additional resources, and extensions. Support for teachers’ own professional development is provided within the activity description, and is also explicitly addressed in separate sections of the book including a model for teaching statistics and a glossary of statistical words. The cost is reasonable, and permission is granted for teachers to reproduce blackline masters for use with their own students.

Published by Key Curriculum Press, Emeryville, California, USA, 2004. ISBN for single-use copy: 1-55953-745-0 Price: $89.95 for single-use copy to $999.95 for unlimited multi-user copy http://www.keypress.com/catalog/products/software/Prod_TinkerPlots.html

“TinkerPlots [is] the only software program specifically designed to get students in grades 4-8 [Ages 9 to 14] excited about what they can learn from data... [S]tudents collect and analyze data to explore their own hypotheses, TinkerPlots helps students grasp the key concepts that drive data analysis by providing user-friendly plotting tools to make their own graphs!...TinkerPlots meets the NCTM’s Principles and Standards for School Mathematics for data analysis and provides students with a strong foundation for high school statistics. TinkerPlots [allows students to] explore their graphs to identify common measures such as the mean, median, mode, and more. In addition, they can drag an outlier and watch these measures change dynamically!... [It has a] colorful, easy-to-learn interface encourages student activity....Using the construction set students can graph data in multiple ways—including dot plots, map graphs, histograms, scatter plots, and box graphs. Students can highlight a case in one graph and see where it is in all the other graphs. They can add text and pictures, turning a TinkerPlots file into a colorful report.” (Copied from webpage)