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East
Ramapo Instructional Technology
Spreadsheet Activities |
UNDER DEVELOPMENT |
The focus of this
page is on the importance of using spreadsheets in your curriculum and the
educational value of spreadsheet activities to improve student achievement.
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Elementary
Spreadsheet Activities
| Title |
Description |
Gr. Level/Discipline |
| Group
Graphing |
Suggested spreadsheet activities for
elementary students. |
Elementary
Grade 3,4 |
| Mungry
Math |
Integrate math with poetry and use a
spreadsheet to try a mathematical analysis of a popular poem by Shel Silverstein.
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Elementary |
| Candy Is Dandy |
Students create graphs to
communicate information,
answer questions, and solve problems as
they investigate color distribution in bags of
M&M's. Working with actual bags of candy, students will sort and classify contents,
summarize their findings on a worksheet, convert the numbers into charts, and make
predictions about color distribution in other
bags of candy. |
Intermediate/Middle School
Language Arts, Math |
Don't Trash
the Earth
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Students collect data own their own
family's trash production, analyze the data with worksheets, chart the data and present
their findings. |
Intermediate/Middle School Math, Science |
| Working with
Data Sets - Spreadheets & Graphs |
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| It's All In the
Chocolate Chips |
Students will investigate which brand of
chocolate chip cookies contains the most chocolate; analyze and compare data
using Word and Excel, communicate their findings in PowerPoint. |
Intermediate/Middle School Math, Science |
| Probability
with M&M's |
A lesson that addresses
probability through M&M's and the graphing calculator and/or EXCEL |
Intermediate/Middle School Math/Science |
| Nutrition Track |
Students keep a food diary & create
various chjarts to analyze and compare their diets to the USDA recommendations. |
Intermediate/Middle School Health,
Math, Science |
| Three Squirrels and
a Pile of Nuts |
Students learn to solve story problems
using a spreadsheet in combination with various problem-solving strategies. |
Middle School
Math |
| Weights and
Measures |
In this activity, students become their
own raw
data to analyze, compare, and convert height and weight measurements. |
Intermediat/Middle School
Math |
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| Middle School
Spreadsheet Activities |
| Title |
Description |
Gr. Level/Discipline |
| Animal Logic |
Students study the traits of three groups
of animals
and use the information gathered to draw conclusions about how the animals are alike, and
how they are different. |
Middle School
Math, Science |
| Baseball
Lineup |
This spreadsheet lesson plan is part of
the North Carolina Public Schools Computer Skills Curriculum |
Middle School
Math |
| Candy Is Dandy |
Students create graphs to
communicate information,
answer questions, and solve problems as
they investigate color distribution in bags of
M&M's. Working with actual bags of candy, students will sort and classify contents,
summarize their findings on a worksheet, convert the numbers into charts, and make
predictions about color distribution in other
bags of candy. |
Intermediate/Middle School
Language Arts, Math |
| Does it Float? |
Hands-on lab for exploring the concepts
of mass, volume, density, and their
relationship. The lab can easily be used as an introductory lab for the year, thus
covering
not only the content objectives, but also procedures for completing labs throughout the
course of
the year. |
Middle School
Science (Grade 8) |
Don't Trash
the Earth
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Students collect data own their own
family's trash production, analyze the data with worksheets, chart the data and present
their findings. |
Intermediate/Middle School Math, Science |
| It's All In the
Chocolate Chips |
Students will investigate which brand of
chocolate chip cookies contains the most chocolate; analyze and compare data
using Word and Excel, communicate their findings in PowerPoint. |
Intermediate/Middle School Math, Science |
| Probability
with M&M's |
A lesson that addresses
probability through M&M's and the graphing calculator and/or EXCEL |
Intermediate/Middle School Math/Science |
| Making Ends Meet |
Students create a
monthly budget, showing income earned from an imaginary job versus estimated monthly
expenses. They then encounter unexpected monthly expenses and must
adjust their budget to compensate for those
expenses. Finally, they write a report about what they learned about "making ends
meet." |
Middle School
Language Arts, Math |
| Your Just Deserts |
Iintegrates language arts withmath
applications as students write letters
to town officials and local businesses asking for favorite dessert recipes, tabulate
responses in a spreadsheet, and turn their
survey results into colorful graphs. |
Middle School
Language Arts, Math |
| Understanding
Poetry |
Students select a poem they would like to
research and analyze. They create
an informal "working" paper on the poem, and create a PowerPoint
presentation to
explain the poem classmates. |
Middle School
Language Arts |
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| High School
Spreadsheet Activities |
| Title |
Description |
Gr. Level/Discipline |
| Acid Rain Simulation |
Students design (with teacher assistance)
a statistical experiment to study a problem. |
High School
Science |
| Buy Low Sell High |
Students learn how to invest in corporate
stocks by creating investment "portfolios." Students develop Excel
worksheets that track their portfolio's
performance over a specified time period. |
High School
Economics, Math |
| Bridging the Generation Gap |
Students create a hypothesis about the
attitudinal differences between generations,
test their hypothesis with a survey, chart their findings, and present their answers to
the class. |
High School
Language Arts, Math |
| Cereal Box Problem |
If each box of cereal contains one of six
prizes then how many boxes of cereal would you expect to have to buy, to get all six
prizes? Students are asked to think of a way to model this problem without buying any
cereal. |
High School
Math |
| Chi Square |
This lesson about statistics
enables
students to be able to understand statistical terms such as expectation, significance, and
chi-square.
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High School
Math |
| Data Analysis Project |
A computer project by students at the
Kent School. Based on UCSMP's Functions, Trigonometry and Statistics, the purpose was to
learn how to do
a statistical analysis and communicate the results. See NBA Draft
Picks, German
Traffic Safety, and Ice
Cream Consumption. |
High School
Advanced Math |
| Investigations with Spreadsheets |
Starter ideas for using spreadheets in
math, ideas need further development. |
High School
Math |
| Linear Regression |
Students explore notions of relationships
between two variables. Includes many problems& activities to aid learning &
classroom discussion. |
High School
Math |
| Variance |
Students download Excel file containing
the salaries for two major league teams
Students use the data to explore whether all baseball players are overpaid.
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High School
Math |
| What's the City Mileage of a
Typical American Car? |
Students analyze the data and find an
average for the mileages of American cars, exploring the bootstrap method of analysis. An
Excel tutorial is provided |
High School
Math
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| Normal Distribution Curves |
Examines the properties and calculations
associated with a
distribution curve, which is basically the shape of a data set when displayed on a
histogram. |
High School
Math |
| Polynomials |
In this modeling activity, students
learn how to use spreadsheets as a tool for analyzing, visualizing, and
solving mathematical problems. |
High School
Math |
| Running to Conclusions |
Explores the process of finding the best
fitting exponential curve to
sets of data. It requires Internet access, a bag of Skittles, and Microsoft Excel. |
High School
Math |
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| Pam Hale, Instructional Technology
Coordinator, East Ramapo CSD, 461 Viola Rd., Spring Valley, NY 10977 |
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