Satellite Data Analysis with CODAP #4511

I hadn’t read your comment when I started crafting mine - but I totally agree with the perseverance thing - while we want to cushion and help our students in so many ways, sometimes we gotta let them feel uncomfortable and even a little frustrated for progress to be made! That’s kinda why I love this lesson!

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  1. Where does this lesson fit in with your curriculum (if the lesson is not a fit for the class you teach, how could the lesson be modified so that it is applicable to your curriculum)?
    I can used this with my Technology class and put them to track the Space X Dragon Capsule when reentry or maybe to create or follow the trajectory of a drone that needs to deliver a package. It was challenge for me, so it will be challenging for them. Due to the huge amount of data, I think I will be creating my own data set.
  2. Which part or parts of the lesson would your students need extra support in order to be successful?
    The amount of data could be overwhelming for them. I would definitely create a sheet with all the sensors available to graph and how they appeared named, so they know which one should be suitable for what they want to do. This is a lesson that I will chunk in pieces because it could be frustrating.
  3. If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your role during the class. What does a successful teacher actively do during this lesson?
    I will be facilitating, guiding them the first activities and then let them practice by their own. Facilitate the discussion and answer the questions. Most importantly, give them support.I really struggle with this one.
  4. If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your student’s role during the class. What does “student success” look like?

This is a lesson for partners or teams of three. One is the researcher, the other the mathematician. I think I would pair students that are strong in math or the ones who master graphing with others with different strengths and weaknesses, so they can support each other. Sometimes they understand better when a peer explains the concept to them than when the teacher explains it.

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**Where does this lesson fit in with your curriculum (if the lesson is not a fit for the class you teach, how could the lesson be modified so that it is applicable to your curriculum)?**This one feels a bit advanced for my class. Though we are working on understanding what an x-axis and a y-axis are. So maybe with some significant modifications we could use it for that and also for interpreting data. The Gr 6 curriculum does include a space component and extreme environment component as well.
Which part or parts of the lesson would your students need extra support in order to be successful? At this point, all of it. Though perhaps with a few lessons and once they get the sense of dragging 2 sets of data to see how they affect each other, things would be easier and they would enjoy the tool.
If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your role during the class. What does a successful teacher do during this lesson? I think a few class lessons would be necessary before working with students one on one to explain ‘how to’ and ‘what they are doing’.
If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your student’s role during the class. What does “student success” look like? Starting small, understanding an x and y axis would be huge. From there, seeing how data sets can work together would be a massive achievement.
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Where does this lesson fit in with your curriculum (if the lesson is not a fit for the class you teach, how could the lesson be modified so that it is applicable to your curriculum)?

I like this lesson a lot from a challenge class perspective and would use it when I teach space to our grade 9’s. There is a chunk of curriulum where they examine the various types of satellites and I like the inquiry aspect of this one. The CODAP application is pretty neat to use and I love how it makes a spreadsheet of data come to life more visually for the eye to see trends.

Which part or parts of the lesson would your students need extra support in order to be successful?

Getting the data and the CODAP application up and running for the first time. I would model this for them as it took my a little bit to understand how to drag the data into the correct axis of the graph component.

If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your role during the class. What does a successful teacher do during this lesson?

I would intro to them many of the amazing things that we use satellites for and see if that sparked any questions from them and hope that they m ight stumble upon the idea of how we actually get the data and what kind of data do we use/analyze. This would lead to the activity where they would be excited to see actual data and explore the visualizations. I would be very curious to see what kind of graph they might build to examine the patterns on the last part of the worksheet.

If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your student’s role during the class. What does “student success” look like?

For me it would be 100% exploratory with a chance for them to play with the CODAP application and data set. I think if they were able to work through the questions on the worksheet and do a summary of what they found interesting at the end.

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Very challenging data indeed. I, too, would create my own data set for my students.

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Where does this lesson fit in with your curriculum (if the lesson is not a fit for the class you teach, how could the lesson be modified so that it is applicable to your curriculum)?
My 7th graders are required to learn about latitude and lonigitude. This provides a practical,“real-world” application for them.
Which part or parts of the lesson would your students need extra support in order to be successful?
The data set is a little overwhelming, so I would extract some data or create a new set for them to use. As with other lessons, I would have to model the use before them so they can understand expectations.
If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your role during the class. What does a successful teacher actively do during this lesson?
Model. Model. Model. Then, make yourself available for questions and tech support. I would foresee teach issues (internet, etc) and would be prepared to address concerns. I also know some of my students would not immediately understand, so I would be available to help them as needed.
If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your student’s role during the class. What does “student success” look like?
Students need to pay attention first, during teacher modeling. Then, they need to follow instructions but also be willing to ask questions as needed. This program can be overwhelming. Students need to understand they may not have all the answers.
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I had a similar experience.

I really want to understand how to facilitate this lesson. I teach K-5 and feel it is too overwhelming as written. I got stuck at Part B. I don’t know how to tell which sensor is the right one to choose for luminosity for example. I couldn’t find one that seemed to show the correct data. I also didn’t understand what it meant by clicking the ruler. I think this lesson needs to be broken down into parts and it should provide scaffolds of support. There is a difference between productive struggle and frustrating struggle which leaves the student (or teacher) feeling overwhelmed and not knowing what to do to improve chances for success. What does success in this lesson look like? I would love to teach this lesson to my 4th and 5th graders and love the use of data sets and CODAP, but I really need to understand it first before I can expect my students to implement it.

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Hi Kristi,
I am in a similar spot as you and wondering about how best to implement this with younger students. With Gr 3-5 students, i’ve used graphing stories as an introductory activity to help students understand that graphs tell a story. That might be a good place to start and then introduce them to other data sets. I like the visual of the map data in this activity as we would have some interesting “notice & wonder” moments. There is discussion earier in the chat about smaller data sets and i’m going to check those out to see if I could look at scaffolding an activity for younger students. Happy to continue the discussion if you would like to think through some ideas :slight_smile:

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Hi @kristi.fehr – Thank you so much for the feedback! I have taught this lesson to 4th and 5th grade classes before and we did it more as an introduction to the CODAP tool using the satellite data. We used the what do you notice and what do you wonder protocol. We didn’t get too deep into the worksheet. A different lesson that has a simpler data set that might be more accessible to your students is this one: https://ehub.ardusat.com/experiments/4530. I really appreciate your feedback and will work to incorporate grade-appropriate scaffolds into the lesson.

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@sciencenate - a little simpler data set: https://ehub.ardusat.com/experiments/4530

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Where does this lesson fit in with your curriculum (if the lesson is not a fit for the class you teach, how could the lesson be modified so that it is applicable to your curriculum)?
I read though this lesson several times and really do not see where I could use this lesson…maybe I just don’t get it. Other than interpreting data/graphs…there is not much here. I’m a bit of a space geek, but there was no “hook” for this assignment and felt it was just an exercise in trying to read data and graphs. Are we using the senor package and point it at a computer screen/piece of paper? If we were exploring the issue of “space debris”, tracking position, its possible impact, and what to do about it…maybe this would be a bit more engaging.
Which part or parts of the lesson would your students need extra support in order to be successful?
The amount of data and the website is a bit overwhelming. The graphic did not fully develop and showed gaps in the track, so to make it more difficult to make visual observations. This lesson would definitely need more setup, background, and assistance. The video and what is on the paper is not enough to make this successful and would have to be broken down and scaffold…it’s just too much at once with little support.

If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your role during the class. What does a successful teacher actively do during this lesson?
I would have to rewrite this lesson, break it down, provide some background, develop a “why or hook”, and probably just leave out the sensor package…seems to be forced. Are we learning to read and interpret data/graphs or learning how to use Arduino?

If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your student’s role during the class. What does “student success” look like?
Learning how to read the data set, interpret the map graph, and make predictions/observations.

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I agree, there just isn’t much in the explanation. If I have to scratch my head trying to figure out how this is suppose to work, I can’t imagine how students would feel. There is just too much data, too few instructions, and little background information.

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I think I struggled more with the CODAP tool and how to use it to interpret the questions. The videos on their site really didn’t provide the support I needed.

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Love the real world application!

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How does this fit in my classroom: I would say this is perfect for graphing and data analysis.
Extra Supports needed: I think the sheer amount of data would be overwhelming to my students. I would also show them how to do it step by step as the instructions were a little lacking in the video.
My role would be to pre-teach the graphing, breaking down each step of the process to smaller chunks to make better sense of it.
The student’s role will show them able to make the graphs and interpret the data if they are having success.

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I love how the graphing works, students will love it! I will forward the CODAP site to our teachers so they can implement. As far as the satellite experiment goes, I think I am missing an attachment as I don’t have the one in the picture and have spent far too long trying to figure it out. Would have loved to see how the data moves.

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I tried to use it with my own data set from our ROV and it was a mess. If I give this another try for next year I will use yours. Thanks for sharing.