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I don’t know that I would call what I do a STEM lesson in probability, but when I get to that unit each year, I go to the Dollar Tree and find all of the toys I can that can be linked to probability. There are so many if you use your imagination.
A good source for STEM Math is National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, http://csearch.nctm.org/csearch.aspx?c=all&q=Probability . A quick search using “Probability” as a keyword brought 6,104 results.
What I have found in teaching probability, once you have found some really good lessons, it’s easy to modify the tool that you are using and adapt it to something else. For example, it doesn’t really matter if you use marbles or chips, the concept is the same. The math is the same. The only difference is in one investigation you are using marbles, the other you are using chips.
There are several really good articles in NSTA journals I have used with my middle school students. The favorite of my 7th and 8th graders is, “Chuck A. Luck Wagers a Buck: Probabilistic Reasoning and the Gambler’s Ruin,” by Christopher Rump. They are thoroughly fascinated with this game, thinking they are going to win. I have them chart their results of 28 trials since I have groups of 4, each of them tries seven times, and records the results of everyone in their group. When they don’t win, I have them read sections of the article. If you wait long enough, they finally get why they don’t stand a chance. You can see the reasoning start to set in, and the moment of the “aha moment” is priceless. This activity sets them up to see probability in a whole different light. Instead of believing they will win, they go into probability thinking about the opportunities to lose and how those occur. Deeper content understanding is inevitable.
Probability Collection
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