Fruit in school

Fruit in school

Auto-markingPencil and paperOnline interactive
Overview
Using this Resource
Connecting to the Curriculum
Marking Student Responses
Working with Students
Further Resources
This task is about reading information from a table.
Each child in a class brought a piece of fruit to school one day.
The table shows what they brought.
Type of Fruit No. of Children
Apples
Grapes
Oranges
Passionfruit
Pears
Bananas
8
3
3
2
4
4

Question

a) What type of fruit did \(1 \over 3\) of the children bring that day?

    • Apples

    • Grapes

    • Oranges

    • Passionfruit

    • Pears

    • Bananas

Question

b)  What fruit did the fewest children bring? 

    • Apples

    • Grapes

    • Oranges

    • Passionfruit

    • Pears

    • Bananas

Question

c)  The next day the same children all brought a piece of fruit again. Which fruit is likely to be brought by the greatest number of children?

    • Apples

    • Grapes

    • Oranges

    • Passionfruit

    • Pears

    • Bananas

Task administration: 
This task can be completed with pencil and paper or online with auto-marking.
Level:
3
Curriculum info: 
Maths, Statistics, Probability
Keywords: 
probability, equivalent fractions, frequency tables, table interpretation
Description of task: 
Students interpret information in a table to answer probability questions.
Curriculum Links: 
This resource can be used to help to identify students' understanding of describing and ordering likelihoods of outcomes for situations involving chance.
 
Learning Progression Frameworks
This resource can provide evidence of learning associated with
Interpreting statistical and chance situations, sets 3-4
within the Mathematics Learning Progressions Frameworks.
Read more about the Learning Progressions Frameworks.
Answers/responses: 
 

Y6 (09/1997)
a) Apples moderate
b) Passionfruit very easy
c) Apples very easy
Diagnostic and formative information: 
   Common errors Likely reason
a) Grape and/or orange Confuses 3 with 1/3 .

Students need to appreciate that data is used to try and make some wider inferences about real situations, not just to describe one particular study. 

  • In part c) they are invited to make an inference about a repeated sample on the same group of individuals. 
  • In other situations they make wish to make an inference about generalizing to a larger population of students, such as students in other classes, of different ages, or in different schools.

It is particularly useful to get students explaining and justifying their responses. They could then discuss what they may need to do to be able to be able generalize the findings of a survey.

Click on the link for more information about mathematics classroom discourse.