Jelly Blubber Colony

Student Teachers Name: Brandy Borg

Date: 2/23 /15

Instruction time: 45 minutes

Students level by grade: 7th

Standard(s) to be addressed:
CCS.7.SP.1- Recognize that different random samples from a population may yield
different inferences.
CCS.7.SP.2- Draw inferences about a population using data from a random sample.
Learning Objectives for this lesson:
Students will:

Use data from a sample to estimate a characteristic of a population

Use sampling distribution, measures of center, and measures of variability to

describe and compare samples

Identified student needs and plans for differentiation: For ELL students, I allow them to talk with a
partner or ask me if they have struggles. I remade the worksheet in a way that I feel all students will be
able to read.
Specific resources needed for this lesson:
Worksheets

Overhead projector, rulers, Jelly Blubber Colony

Instructional method(s) used in this lesson: Class discussion, partner work, individual work

Lesson Sequence:

DMR- Students will review measurements with a ruler, using centimeters.

Hook- I will begin the lesson showing students images of new species that have been discovered in the
last year or two. There are some strange ones. The last one is a type of jelly. Then I will tell the students
that there was a jelly blubber species found and it is our job to try to determine the average length of a
blubber. The lesson gives a listing of 100 blubbers that were measured.
http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/photos/8-bizarre-newly-discovered-deep-seacreatures/the-last-frontier-on

Direct instruction/Modeling
I will instruct students how to do the activity but we have been on this lesson for about a week
and they have done two others that are slightly similar.
Allow students to look at Jelly Blubber Colony for 5 seconds, then have them write their estimate
for the length of what they think the average jelly blubber is.
I will show them a data set from a class of 20 students and see how our class is similar to them.
Now they will just pick 10 blubbers they want to measure. They will measure them and write the
lengths down, and find the mean of that 10.
***NOW HAND OUT THE MEASUREMENT CHART***
They will generate a random two digit number from a deck of cards (1-10, and a royal being the
zero). That number is the jelly blubber they should look up on the chart and write the actual
measurement of. From these given measurements, the students will find the mean. Then they
will give their data to the teacher who will plot it on a line plot.

 Check(s) for understanding and scaffolding of student learning- This will be done as I am
walking around the room assisting students. Toward the end of class, we will have a class
discussion that will wrap up their data that they are finding. At this time I will be able to hear the
students ideas and understanding of the topic. We have been building on the topic of random
sampling and I am hoping that at the end of this activity, most of the students will be participating
in the class discussion.

Assessment of/for learning- I will be assessing students informally during the lesson and during the
discussion. Afterward, I will collect their work and evaluate what students understood through the
discussion questions that they are supposed to answer.

Closure of the lesson

Students will give me their averages for the last portion of random data that they get. I will put
that on a line plot that is compared with the two other versions of data. We will discuss how we
can compare and contrast the line plots.
Which method of sampling would give us the most accurate?
How have the averages changed between the plots?
Let students know that the average length of a blubber is 19.4 cm
Evaluate how the actual average length is similar/different from what the class got for their
data (last plot).
Why do we see differences or similarities?
What can we predict about the entire population from this sample size of data?
See if students can pinpoint any errors I made in performing the sample sizes. Maybe hint to a
way that would get students to think about what sample sizes they took in Reeses Pieces and
what sample sizes they took for jelly blubbers.
Reiterate that we should try to sample approximately 1/3 of the population in order to get an
accurate sample.

Bridge to next lesson

Next day students will be doing activity on cloning and predicting about a population by
examining a sample of the population. This is putting the students deeper into thinking about
sampling.