Basic Productivity Tools (BPT)

Lesson Idea Name: M&Ms and Confidence Intervals

Content Area: Statistics
Grade Level(s): 12th Grade
Content Standard Addressed: MGSE9-12.S.IC.4 Use data from a sample survey to estimate a population
mean or proportion; develop a margin of error through the use of simulation models for random sampling.

Technology Standard Addressed: Creative Communicator – 1.6A - Students choose the

appropriate platforms and tools for meeting the desired objectives of their creation or communication.

Selected Technology Tool: Microsoft Excel

URL(s) to support the lesson (if applicable):

Excel Spreadsheet: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/fc4x8fpfo9yrl1urbckjy/M-M-Activity-
Spreadsheet.xlsx?dl=0&rlkey=f3xpangixg0vudlin8fc4oi03
Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy Level(s):

X
☐ Remembering ☐ Understanding
X
☐ Applying
X X
☐ Analyzing X
☐ Evaluating ☐ Creating

Levels of Technology Integration:

☐ Infusion Level: Students may work at a higher Bloom’s Level, but they do not have any “Voice or Choice”
during the activity and most of the decisions are made by the teacher.

X ☐ Integration Level: We would like to see ALL lessons/activities reach this level. The project is student-
driven. Students have “Voice and Choice” in the activities, selecting the topic of study and determining the
technology tool to demonstrate mastery of the standard. The teacher becomes more of a facilitator.

X ☐ Expansion Level: The projects created are shared outside of the classroom, publishing student work and
promoting authorship. This could be reached by showcasing the project on the school’s morning
newscast, posting the project to the classroom blog, or publishing via an outside source.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL): All students will be able to engage with this activity, as the minimal
requirements are just counting and categorizing M&Ms, entering the values and choosing some other values
to prompt the automatic calculations. The spreadsheet for this activity also contains written directions to
accompany teacher verbal instructions, as well as formulas preloaded into cells to automatically perform
many of the calculations. For students who are still learning the steps to gathering sample data and
calculating a confidence interval for the population proportion, the steps are outlined and modelled step by
step. It also allows students to choose different setting and select different values to see how this impacts the
results. Students who are more familiar with the steps or more advanced Excel users, can explore the
prepopulated lists, embedded formulas, and other more complicated Excel features.

In the second part of this lesson, where students create their own examples of a real-life scenario calculating
a confidence interval, they can build an example according to the level of their conceptual and technological
understanding. Beginning users could simply insert a list data values or survey responses, calculate a
proportion, and then use the formulas to calculate the margin of error. More advanced users can experiment
with utilizing graphics, hiding data lists, inserting formulas, and accepting user input to create alternate
scenarios and calculations. Since all of this is modelled in the practice exercise and example, they have a
resource to explore and learn from on their own as well as the teacher to ask questions to clarify or correct
SBooker, 2022
 Basic Productivity Tools (BPT)
their understanding. Additionally, they will be able to tap into other skills and abilities including graphic
design and creative writing to improve the expression of their understanding and the presentation of their
individually created activity.

Lesson idea implementation: This activity is really two lessons in one. The first phase will be a presentation
and walkthrough of the M&M Confidence Interval spreadsheet. Each student will be able to gather their own
data from their own pack of M&Ms while walking through their own copy of the spreadsheet and proceed at
their own pace. The teacher will supplement the instructions on the spreadsheet with reminders to students
about previous lessons to activate their prior knowledge of gathering data, calculating proportions, and
calculating confidence intervals. They will also be available to answer questions and observe student progress
to encourage anyone who is stuck or not engaged. Since the students are able to check their own answers
and the activity allows for endless possible scenarios, students can both explore it multiple times with
different values, as well as assist their friends if they need assistance. This portion may take some students
the majority of the class, bot for others it will be much quicker and they can move on to phase two.

Once students understand the given example, they will move on to the creative portion where they will make
their own spreadsheet presenting an entirely new example of calculating a confidence interval from sample
data. As stated in the UDL discussion above, there is a lot of flexibility in the detail and complexity of these
spreadsheets and presentations. During this project phase, students will work independently employing their
own creative idea as to the subject, content, format, and complexity of their example. This will help all
students have the opportunity to spend some time working in Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy’s highest level,
creating. Teacher will again be available to monitor progress, over suggestions, redirections, affirmation, and
encouragement as needed to keep students working and motivated. This phase will definitely stretch on to a
second day and possibly student work outside of class. As students are done, they can make their examples
available to the class so that they can test and critique each other’s projects for clarity, fun, and accuracy.
Students may receive informal feedback from each other, as well as some written feedback from the teacher
on both their ability to complete the project, as well as their understanding of calculating confidence
intervals.

Reflective Practice: I believe that this will be an engaging activity for all students as they can all participate in
the simplest way to get to an answer in the example. Additionally, they will get to explore an interesting
question about whether the M&Ms in a bag match the proportions they are supposed, all while enjoying
some M&Ms themselves. The open exploration of the example spreadsheet should serve to expose some
students to Excel functionality they have not seen before deepening their understanding of the software and
the content. Having to create their own example whether simple or complex will require them to express a
basic understanding of the steps in calculating a confidence interval. Being a two-phase project, there is
already the extension of part two built in, but additionally students could then take what they have learned
on this activity and project development into the next lesson on Confidence intervals for mean values, or
Hypothesis Testing. They could also take their refined creations and post them online for other students to
explore and enjoy.

SBooker, 2022