Food for Thought: The M&M Spreadsheet Project for Math Students

Description: Students were put into groups and given bags on M&M's. They were given the task of finding how many M&M's there were of each of the five colors of the candy in the bag. The teacher had them record the information and taught them how to use a spread sheet to find averages of the number of a certain color per bag of M&M's. He taught them how to use the sum and average functions in Excel. He also taught them how to use the chart wizard to create a bar graph of the information that they entered into the spreadsheet. They then printed the graphs that they created. The instructor teaches the students the importance of representing the data accurately and drawing accurate conclusions about the data from the graphical representation of the data. The students learn that the data collected is more accurate when more samples of data are analyzed. A guest comes into the classroom to teach the students to question the conclusions that they make to make sure that their conclusions are plausible and accurate.
How I would modify this lessons to adapt it to my classroom: Since I would use this in my math classroom I would not need to do much editing to make this work for a certain grade level. I would like to use a presentation similar to this in teaching students about percents and how to figure them using a cross multiplication system. The students would do the same thing that the instructor in the video had his students do, but I would add on a percent section to the project in which the students would have to figure out what percent of the total amount of M&M's were of a certain color. The students would then use Excel to make a pie graph with all the colors represented with the respective percents according to the color of the M&M. I would have the groups of students find the average percent for each color of M&M and make a class pie graph that represented the average for the class.
I really liked the way that the instructor put the project together and I would really like to do something similar to this in my classroom one day and make it a little more complicated for a higher grade level.

Netiquette

My Netiquette Rules for my students are located at:
http://docs.google.com/View?id=df6gtvhd_2fqxkbbhk
Happy Reading!

The Jigsaw Method of Classroom Instruction

The jigsaw method is a means of instruction that promotes cooperative learning in small groups. Cooperative meaning that each student plays a vital role in the learning process and that all students are needed for everyone to get a good grade.
The jigsaw method can be used in almost every classroom situation. If a classroom had only five computers, a way that a teacher could use the jigsaw method is to have one member from each of the groups working at the computer at a time. Essentially, the group of students at the computers would comprise the "expert" group for whatever topic the group was given. These students at the computers could be given a list of websites from which they would have to pull facts about the given topic. Then this "expert" group would meet together and discuss their findings just like they would normally do.
An advantage to this method is that the part of the way it works makes every student needed. An example was given in the reading where one student didn't like another student and therefore tuned out him/her. This doesn't work with the jigsaw method because every student has a different piece of the metaphorical puzzle and each piece is equally important. It would be impossible for a student to do well on the test given if he/she didn't have all of the pieces of the puzzle.
A disadvantage to the jigsaw method is that the group may become dominated by one student who is competitive and wants to monopolize conversation. The method does not really permit this since each student is a valuable resource for the rest of the group on their given subject. Another disadvantage could be students who refuse to work as a group because they don't like another person that is in their group. This can be solved with a quick trip to an administrator's office.