Teacher guide — Grade 8, Unit 7: Telling the story¶

Time: 3 lessons + project (about 5 periods). Track: A (no-code).

#	Lesson	Time
1	Claim, evidence, reasoning	40–45 min
2	Poster design	40–45 min
3	Feedback and presenting	40–45 min
P	Unit project: Our class, our school poster	2 periods

Before you start¶

Materials: Poster paper, markers, sticky notes for feedback.
Read docs/pedagogy/lesson-anatomy.md and docs/pedagogy/ai-use-policy.md.

If you have no computers / no internet¶

All eight units run on paper, calculators and the blackboard. Computers are optional (spreadsheet or CODAP, https://codap.concord.org); every activity below has a paper version.

Common misconceptions¶

A poster full of graphs without a claim. Every graph needs a reason to be there.
Claims that go beyond the data ("all students" from 10 classmates).

Differentiation¶

Support: give a partially filled table / sentence starters; pair with a data-steward role.
Stretch: ask "what would change your conclusion?" and "who is missing?"

Answer key (check questions)¶

Lesson 1: Claim, evidence, reasoning 1. What is evidence?
Answer: Data (numbers, graph) that support the claim. 2. What does reasoning add?
Answer: It explains how the evidence supports the claim and its limits. 3. 10 classmates walk. Claim: 'Nepali students walk to school.' OK?
Answer: No: sample is too small and not fair; claim too general.

Lesson 2: Poster design 1. What goes in the headline?
Answer: The main message/claim. 2. Name two things every graph needs.
Answer: Title and labelled axes (with units). 3. Why add a 'what we cannot say' box?
Answer: To be honest about limits and avoid overclaiming.

Lesson 3: Feedback and presenting 1. What is a 'wish' in feedback?
Answer: A specific suggestion for improvement. 2. What three things go in a 1-minute talk?
Answer: Claim, evidence, one limit. 3. Why avoid saying only 'good' or 'bad'?
Answer: It does not help the person improve.

Assessment¶

Starter quiz each lesson (3 questions, one recalling the previous lesson); unit quiz in quiz.yml; project marked with the rubric in docs/pedagogy/assessment.md; 2-minute oral check per group.

Alignment¶

Extends the Grade 8 compulsory Maths statistics chapter (pie chart, mean, median, mode) with question-forming, data collection and interpretation.

Answers: practice exercises¶

(a) E (b) C (c) R.
e.g. "Most of us walk to school"; "Maths and Social are our favourite subjects"; "Half of us use a phone for more than two hours a day" (numbers must come from data).
Claim: walking is the most common way to reach school in our class. Evidence: 26 of 36 students (72%) walk; the next most common, bus, is 5 (14%) (class survey, synthetic table). Reasoning: walking is the mode by a wide margin; limitation: one class, one survey; travel mode may change in the monsoon.
(a) "17 of our 20 friends said they love momo" (or whatever the count was); (b) "In our class, students who use phones more tended to have lower marks; we cannot tell which causes which"; (c) "Our results were higher than two nearby schools last year."
Stars are hard to find: perhaps "you used real data", "you ended with a recommendation". Wishes: headline as a claim; one bar chart instead of three 8-colour pies; add source; cut the paragraph to two lines.
~120 words: claim, the 26 of 36 (72%) figure pointing at the bar, a limitation, a next step.
(b): it is specific, says which way the bias pushes and why. (a) is true of all data and tells the reader nothing.
"Smarter" is not what literacy measures (literacy is reading/writing ability, linked to access to schools); and the table is synthetic. Better: "In this synthetic table, Hill districts have a higher median literacy rate (77.5%) than Mountain districts (65.5%)."
17 of 36 (47%) sleep under 8 hours; median 8.05 hours. Not supported: fewer than half are under 8 hours. CER: "About half our class (17 of 36) sleeps less than 8 hours on school nights; the median is just above 8 hours." Good discussion: the same claim can be true for one class and false for another.

Real-data exercises: notes¶

R1 Check that the source line names both OWID and the underlying source shown on the chart page.
R2 Good practice: compare the headline number with the source table; look for percent vs percentage points, counts vs rates, and missing time periods.
R3 Assessed with the project rubric.