Cross-grade arc
From Data to Decisions
How do you turn a pile of data into a defensible choice? This arc builds the same reasoning from K–2 surveys up to high-school models — collect, represent, interpret, decide.
7 lessons · Grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12 · ~6 hr total
Data literacy isn’t one lesson — it’s a habit that grows with students. This collection traces a single line of reasoning across the grades: gathering data and graphing it, asking a question a model can actually answer, walking a decision tree, and weighing evidence to commit to a choice. Use it as a vertical scope-and-sequence across a building, or pick the entry point that fits your grade band. Every lesson keeps the data small enough to reason about by hand.
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2026-08 · Unplugged + plugged · 45 min
Get-to-Know-You Data Graph
A first-week class survey becomes a lesson in data: students collect responses, build a bar graph, and then ask the question that matters most — who got counted, who didn't, and what the graph does and doesn't say about the class.
Math · Social Studies — grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8
Open lesson → -
Unplugged + plugged · 55 min
Data Detectives: The Class Survey
Students design a survey, collect and chart real class data, then interrogate it — who got left out, which question was loaded, what the numbers do and don't prove — learning that data is made by choices, and the choices carry bias.
Social Studies · Math — grades 6-8, 9-12
Open lesson → -
2026-08 · Plugged · 55 min
Model the Question
The plugged companion to Decision Paths: students build a simple spreadsheet model of a real classroom or school question — supplies, lunch lines, a fundraiser — change the inputs, and check the model against reality, meeting modeling and 'what a model leaves out.'
Math · Science · Social Studies · CS/Technology — grades 6-8
Open lesson → -
2026-08 · Unplugged · 50 min
Decision Paths
An integrated lesson on decision-making: students map a real back-to-school dilemma as a branching decision tree, weigh consequences, and discover that the questions you ask — and their order — decide the outcome, with a callout for whatever subject you teach.
Math · Science · Social Studies · ELA · CS/Technology — grades 6-8
Open lesson → -
2026-10 · Unplugged + plugged · 45 min
The Haunted Decision Tree
Students build a choose-your-path "monster classifier" on butcher paper — yes/no questions that sort creatures into types — and meet the core intuition scientists use to classify the living world, learning that whoever chooses the questions decides what's fair.
Science · CS/Technology · Elementary (multi-subject) — grades K-2, 3-5
Open lesson → -
2026-08 · Plugged · 60 min
Data to Decision
The plugged companion to Systems & Feedback: students collect or load real data, analyze it in a spreadsheet, audit it for bias, and write an evidence-based recommendation — meeting data science and the discipline of trusting data only after you've checked it.
Math · Science · Social Studies · ELA · CS/Technology — grades 9-12
Open lesson → -
2027-04 · Unplugged + plugged · 50 min
Forecast Without a Computer
Using paper records of past storms, students predict a storm's next move by finding patterns in historical tracks — doing by hand the modeling that protects communities, and glimpsing the kind of forecasting systems they could one day build and steer.
Science · Math — grades 3-5, 6-8, 9-12
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