The purpose of this activity is for students to determine whether or not questions about data can be answered by using a given data representation. Students explain why questions can or cannot be answered with the representation. When students explain why some questions can not be answered, they think carefully about the meaning of the data representation, what it allows them to conclude, and what it does not allow them to conclude (MP6).

• “What question did you find that cannot be answered? Why can’t it be answered?”
• “How can we change the question so that it can be answered using this representation?”

The purpose of this activity is for students to think of questions that can be answered using the data representation they create as they collect data from the class. Although there are two different sets of data, all of the questions students ask should be able to be answered using either data set. Questions are compiled during the Activity Synthesis and will be used in the following activity.

To make it very clear that there are two data sets, make two copies of the representation shown in the student book and label them “Group A” and “Group B.” Then use the appropriate copy to record the data for each group. 

• Invite previously identified students to share and record their questions about their data.
• “Now you will ask your partner some of these questions.”

The purpose of this activity is for students to ask and answer questions about data. Partners ask each other questions about the data collected in the previous activity. Most of the questions should be able to be answered using the data representation. However if a question can’t be answered, the students should explain to their partner why they can’t answer the question using the data representation. Connecting cubes should be available to all students, since some questions may require adding within 20.

• Choose one of the questions from the list created in Activity 2 that has different answers in the 2 data sets.
• “Use your data representation to answer the question.”
• Share responses.
• “Why do we have 2 different answers to this question?” (We have 2 different sets of data.)