What Makes Us Unique?  A Data - Driven Look at Our 6th Grade Life
By:  Amy Londot

Project at a Glance :

Students will design and carry out a real-world statistical investigation based on a topic of interest related to student life. Through creating and analyzing surveys, students will explore data sets that reveal class trends, habits, and preferences—ranging from screen time and bedtime routines to book reading and commute times. The project culminates in a professional-quality statistics poster that includes graphs, central tendency measures, and a meaningful interpretation of the data.

Driving Question:

How can we collect, represent, and explain data to better understand our school?  

Standards:

• Domain: Statistics and Probability - 6.SP.1, 6.SP.2, 6.SP.3, 6.SP.4, & 6.SP
• Mathematical Practices - MP1, MP4, & MP5, & MP6

Team / Culture Building:

• ​Skittles Activity - To keep the energy going after the sweet vs. salty entry event, the Skittles and dice activity adds a playful twist that deepens connection and curiosity. Students each pick a Skittle, then roll a die to answer a get-to-know-you question linked to that color—helping the class collect fun, personal data while building community.
• Six word memoir - This PBL will be early in the year so this will be a great way for students to get to know one another.
• Hopes/Fears/Norms - Always great to do at the beginning of the year​

Entry Event:

• ​To kick off the project, start with a fun and simple entry event: offer students a small sampling of sweet and salty snacks (like a few Skittles vs. pretzels) and have them vote for their preference. Tally the results on the board, then guide a short class discussion: "What could we learn if we surveyed more students? What other questions could we ask to find out what makes our class unique?" This quick, hands-on activity gets students thinking about data collection, preferences, and how surveys can reveal patterns—setting the stage for their own statistics investigation.​

Stakeholders:

• Community Members
• Local Businesses
• School board
• Teachers
• Students
• Parents
• Future community members - People looking to move into the community

Empathy Building:

• To build empathy in this project, students will see data as more than numbers—each point represents a real person with unique experiences. Activities like the Skittles and dice game and class discussions will help students appreciate the diverse routines and challenges of their classmates. Through meaningful survey topics and personal reflections, they’ll deepen their sense of connection and community. We will also create stakeholder and empathy maps to further understand different perspectives.
• Stakeholders Map​​

• Empathy Map

Inquiry / Need to Knows:

• Students will participate in facilitated mini-lessons on how to display data, covering the essential 6th grade math standards.
• Next, students will create their Need to Know list for the project through a Think-Pair-Share activity. Since data displays are a new 6th grade math skill, they will build this list as they learn the content and explore the driving question. This process will lead into creating Stakeholder and Empathy maps.

• Finally, students will interview a parent to find out what questions they would want answered related to the driving question.

Incubation:

• Idea Quota - Students were given 10 minutes to come up with as many topics they could think of to survey the 5th and 6th grade student body at White Pines. 

• Idea sorting - once students determined they needed numerical data to represent graphically, students sorted the topics into qualitative v quantitative data categories.

• Anti Solution - After students generated their ideas, we discussed what information might not be interesting or relevant for our stakeholders to learn about, which we referred to as the “anti-solution.” Students then sorted their sticky notes into categories of possible solutions and anti-solutions to help focus on the most meaningful directions for their project.​
  

• Narrowing down - Students selected their top five ideas from the sticky notes they had generated. They then developed statistical questions to represent those ideas, using AI as a tool to help guide and refine their questions.​

---

Solution Building:

Critique and Revision: 

Authentic Audience:

Final Presentation:

Click here for teacher's full plan.

​Reflection and Feedback:
The statistical data poster project was a wonderful opportunity for students to apply their math skills in a real-world context. It was great to see students so engaged, curious, and proud of their work. - Ms. Ackerman


I’m really excited to incorporate the statistical data poster project into my classroom. It gives students a meaningful way to apply math skills to real-world situations while encouraging creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking. - Mrs. Kapala


It was really fun making the data poster because we got to see what our classmates are like and use math to show it in a cool way! - Viviannah Baker


I liked this project because I got to survey something I was interested in and we got to collect data and turn it into something everyone could understand. - Arya Harsha


Working on this project was so much more fun than a worksheet. - Tristan Adkins

Team Photo

Click here for the teacher's Journey through PBL on Padlet . . .

Meet the Educator: