Skill in the critical reading of data, which is a component of quantitative literacy, is becoming a necessity in our highly technological society. In particular, processing information presented in newspapers, magazines, commercial reports, and on television is dependent on a reader's ability to comprehend graphs. To meet the needs of society, industry, and business, our students must become adept at processing information. As stated in the Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics, children must be involved in collecting, organizing, and describing data. They should be able to construct, read, and interpret graphs as well as analyze trends and predict from the data (NCTM 1989, pp. 54, 105). This book is intended to provide elementary and middle school teachers and teacher educators with practical ideas on incorporating the graph-reading component of quantitative literacy into the instructional program. It can be used to supplement the teachers' editions of K-8 textbooks or as an elementary methods text for preservice and in-service teachers. It provides many suggestions for activities that can be used with youngsters in both small-group and large-group instruction. In support of the Standards (NCTM 1989), the activities presented in this book provide teachers with ideas to emphasize exploration, investigation, reasoning, and communication in mathematics. Furthermore, suggestions for using the computer as a tool are presented in many activities. This material can be used at different grade levels, depending on the learners' prior experiences with collecting and analyzing data. The data generated and collected by the students should be interesting and meaningful to them.
The CAUSE Research Group is supported in part by a member initiative grant from the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and Data Science Education