Statistics Teachers' Day (Years 9 to 13)
NCEA 2011: Laying foundations for inference in 2010

Tamaki Campus, University of Auckland

Tuesday 24 November 2009

Programme:

8:45 - 9:00am Registration
9:00 - 10:00am Plenary Session 1
Welcome
Address by Associate Professor Alexei Drummond
10:00 - 10:30am Morning tea (provided)
10:30 - 11:10am Plenary Session 2 NCEA 2011: Laying foundations for inference in 2010
Maxine Pfannkuch and Pip Arnold, University of Auckland
11:15 - 12:15pm Workshop Session 1A (5 equivalent workshops)
Workshops on laying foundations for inference in 2010
12:15 - 1:00pm Lunch (provided)
1:00 - 2:00pm Workshop Session 1B (5 equivalent workshops)
Workshops continue
2:05 - 3:05pm Workshop Session 2 (4 sessions)
  • Wrap-up on Session 1 (including a discussion of the NCEA Achievement Standard 1.10)
    Maxine Pfannkuch and Pip Arnold
  • AND games, OR games and fooling the teacher
    Marion Steel, Epsom Girls Grammar School
  • Probability in the new curriculum
    Louise Addison, Team Solutions, University of Auckland
  • Developing Year 9 School Students' Understanding of Statistical Literacy: A Collaborative Research Project
    Sashi Sharma, Viney Shandil, Semisi Talakia'atu, Phil Doyle

Rationale:

Immersing Year 10 students in ideas about sample, population, sampling variability, and "making a call" is essential for laying the foundations for the NCEA Standard 1.10 on comparing box plots. Our current research shows that as teachers we have much to learn about how best to facilitate students' understanding of these ideas. It also shows that students need at least two years to develop the reasoning and thinking required for NCEA level one statistics standards.

Since it is urgent that teachers take action next year, a main part of the Statistics Teachers' Day will be focussed on everyone learning about how to reason inferentially. We will begin (in plenary session 2) with an overview of key ideas for inferential reasoning. Then everyone (in workshop sessions 1A and 1B) will be involved in participating in hands-on student activities and thinking about how to promote, in students, the ability to "see" and compare sample distributions, how to expand students' attention from the data in hand to some wider universe, and how to draw conclusions taking sampling variability into account. Finally in a wrap-up session (in workshop session 2) we will present some examples of students' work and invite everyone to comment on how we can work together to grow students' inferential reasoning and lay the foundations for learning inference in 2010.

Registration form, map, and additional information

Auckland Mathematical Association

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