Probability: Math Notebooks

Today's Math Notebook was inspired by the WONDERFUL Mrs. Runde over at Runde's Room, although, I catered it to our needs.  I really liked how she had her students write out the learning goals and task before starting, so I decided to try it.  I always let the kids know what our goals for the day are, as well as have our "I Can" statements posted clearly in the room, but this is the first time we really put it in writing as a class.  We have been working with probability, so I decided to make a spinner as well. I also liked how she had the kids figure out a way to divide their circle in ten equal pieces as a nice review on dividing as well as remembering how many degrees are in a circle!  We also love working with protractors, so it was a nice review.   (We also had the chance to review equivalent fractions AND percents!  All in one activity! YAY!) Below is our page:

Because our goal was to compare theoretical results with actual results, and to make predictions, our notebooks ends up steering away from Runde's a little bit.  We have been having trouble creating frequency tables lately, so here was a great opportunity to do so.  I was going to have them do their experiment 20 times instead of just ten, so we based our theoretical results off of 20 (and reviewed equivalent fractions at the same time!)  I also had them come up with a prediction of what they thought would happen, based on their theoretical results.  Then, it was spin time!  They recorded their results in their frequency table and wrote out their conclusions based on their actual results.

Lastly, we met to talk about the reasonableness of certain results.  We used our theoretical results to determine if the actual result was reasonable or not.  Before this lesson, only 50% of my students answered a "reasonable or not reasonable" question correctly.  After this lesson, we were up to 87%!  I would say we succeeded!  :)