Traveling to School
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Approach:  One to one
ACCESS
Level: Year 4 and year 8
Focus: Interpret graphs; prediction  
Resources:
Graph
614kb
Questions/instructions:  

Hand student graph.
Look carefully at this graph.

 
Traveling to School
   
 
% responses
2009 ('05)
y4
y8
1. How many children walk to school? 11 93 (88) 99 (99)
2. How many more children come by bus than by car? 3 62 (62) 89 (91)
3. This graph is for the 23rd of May.
Would the graph look the same every day?
no 90 (89) 95 (92)
4. Why do you think that?     
Explanation: understanding of variation
(e.g. some children might stay home
because sick; some children might
want to be driven if it is raining)
51 (49) 79 (72)
some understanding of variation but unclear 26 (31) 15 (20)
5. What does the row with ‘Train’ tell you about how these children go to school?    
nobody took the train that day 5 (3) 6 (5)
nobody catches/uses the train 46 (62) 59 (64)
no trains in area/train doesn’t stop there/train too expensive, etc. 17 (16) 23 (19)
6. Tom was not at school on that day. How do you think he normally gets to school?    
  no way to tell/can’t know 2 (1) 11 (12)
walk 26 (25) 32 (31)
bus 21 (19) 17 (16)
car 27 (40) 17 (19)
train 16 (8) 15 (11)
any other response (incl. “don’t know”) 8 (7) 8 (11) 
7. Why do you think that?      
Explanation: sound explanation for “not able to tell” 1 (1) 7 (9)
  reasonable argument for specific choice based on graph 27 (17) 46 (41)

Total score:
6–7
14 (10) 41 (34)
5
30 (28) 39 (40)
4
24 (26) 13 (20)
3
14 (18) 4 (3)
0–2 18 (18)
3 (3)
Subgroup Analysis [Click on charts to enlarge] :
Year 4


Year 8

Commentary:
Most students were good at direct interpretation of the graph for the day, but far fewer understood day-to-day variability in travel methods. There was no meaningful change in performance from 2005 to 2009. Year 4 Mäori and Pasifika students and year 8 Pasifika students scored substantially lower than their Pakeha counterparts.