Background Information for Teachers

Until fairly recently, probability was not considered a middle school topic. You may feel that you have not had as much practice in teaching concepts of probability as you have in teaching other math topics. These professional resources, designed for teachers, offer review of the material as well as ideas for the classroom.

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Probability http://www.learner.org/channel/courses/learningmath/data/session8/index.html

In this online workshop, you can investigate probability by exploring games of chance, probability models, tree diagrams, random events, and even the binomial probability model. Included in this session are video clips of teachers as they work through the problems, hands-on activities, and an online simulation for exploring these abstract concepts. Instruction on each idea is clearly set out through hands-on problems as well as diagrams and text explanation. Practice problems with solutions are included. You will also find links to online articles written for teachers. This is one session in the free online course: Learning Math: Data Analysis, Statistics, and Probability.

Navigating Through Data Analysis, Statistics, and Probability http://my.nctm.org/ebusiness/productcatalog/product.aspx?ID=12327

By George W. Bright, Dargan Frierson, Jr., James E. Tarr, and Cynthia Thomas This book, published by NCTM, offers the teacher ideas on how to make the abstract concepts of probability and statistics understandable to middle grades students. It introduces students to the basics: sample space and the use of tree diagrams and geometric regions to represent sample spaces. Many activities explore probability in the context of the fairness of games. Engaging problems deal with population samples, prediction over the long term, and the law of large numbers. A supplemental CD-ROM features activity pages for students, interactive electronic activities, and additional readings for teachers.

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Copyright September 2006 — The Ohio State University. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0424671. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.