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Educator Professional Development Onboarding to the Data Science Learning Progressions

Hannah Kurzweil

Section Putting It All Together: Your Analysis Action Plan

You’ve explored strategies for helping students summarize data, understand variability, use digital tools appropriately, and create simple models. It’s important to now link your new knowledge back to the Analysis and Modeling Techniques learning progressions for your grade band. Explore those where you can see all of Strand C
 9 
here
. Now let’s create a practical plan for building these analysis skills in your classroom.
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Exploration 22. Choose Your Analysis Implementation Strategy.

Consider which approach aligns best with your teaching style and student needs:
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Option 1: Weekly Data Talks - Spend 10 minutes each week having students practice the “Notice, Compare, Quantify, Extend” routine with different types of data (from your curriculum, current events, or student interests).
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Option 2: Analysis Stations - Create rotating stations where students practice different analysis skills: summarizing data, finding patterns, identifying outliers, making simple predictions.
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Option 3: Digital Tool Exploration - Introduce one new digital tool per month, having students use it to analyze the same dataset in different ways and compare results.
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Option 4: Model Building Projects - Have students create and test simple models related to your curriculum content, focusing on making predictions and understanding limitations.
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Checkpoint 56.

What’s the most important factor to consider when choosing how to implement data analysis activities in your classroom?
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Hint.
Think about building students’ thinking skills versus teaching specific techniques.
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Solution.
The goal is building students’ ability to think analytically about any data they encounter, not just mastering specific tools or techniques. Choose approaches that help students develop habits of systematic observation, pattern recognition, and critical questioning that they can use throughout their lives, regardless of the technology or subject matter.
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Checkpoint 57. My Data Analysis Action Plan.

Create your specific plan for implementing analysis skills in your classroom.
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(a)

Which implementation strategy feels most sustainable for you to try for the next month? Why?
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(b)

What’s one specific analysis activity you could try with your students this week using data from your current curriculum?
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(c)

How will you help students move from describing data to interpreting what it means? What questions will you ask?
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(d)

What digital tools (if any) are available to you, and how might you introduce them gradually?
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Remember: The goal is building students’ analytical thinking, not memorizing procedures. Focus on helping them develop the habit of asking good questions about data.
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This video gives some examples for easy data analysis ideas to implement in your classroom.
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Checkpoint 58.

Before moving to the next module, reflect: What aspect of data analysis do you think will be most engaging for your students? What aspect might be most challenging? How can you build on their natural curiosity to develop analytical thinking skills?
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