🎯 Learning Objectives
- Identify the steps of the investigative cycle
- Identify the data needed to answer questions that you will define
- Create a data capture form
💬 Key Vocabulary
- data
- PPDAC
- insight
- data capture
- investigative cycle
- data source
📝 Level 1 – The investigative cycle recap
In the last lesson, we learnt about a framework that we can follow when posing and solving real-world problems using data.
Use the Level 1 worksheet to:
- Put the steps into the correct order
- Match the descriptions with the steps
📖 Problem – Litter
Almost 48% of people admit to dropping litter.
The amount of litter dropped each year in the UK has increased by a massive 500 percent since the 1960s.
Seven out of every ten items of litter is food packaging.
Around 122 tons of cigarette butts and cigarette-related litter are dropped every day across the UK.
1.3 million pieces of rubbish are dropped on UK roads every weekend. A third of motorists admit to littering while they are driving.
The litter at Disneyland
- How did Walt Disney narrow down the larger problem into a more specific question? What was that question?
- What was the outcome?
- Did it solve the problem?
“Walt Disney wanted to know just how long a park patron would go with trash in their hand before just letting it drop to the ground. So he sat on a bench and watched the visitors of his park, counting the steps of those looking for a place to throw out their garbage. He counted 30 steps on average, and that is still the distance between each trash can in Disney, further ensuring a clean experience.” thedailymeal.com
Your school, your community
Your school is part of your community.
How can we use data to help us improve our school community by reducing our waste and recycling as much as we can?
What questions do we need answers to, in order to help us solve this problem?
Write down two questions in the worksheet.
📖 The Plan
At the planning stage, we need to think first about what we predict the answers to our questions will be.
Complete Task 2 on your worksheet.
The next part of your plan involves thinking about the data.
We don’t have a data set to analyse, so we will need to collect the data ourselves.
What data could we collect about the litter that we find?
Complete Task 3 on your worksheet.
Ideas for data to collect
- Type of litter
- Food waste
- Food packaging
- Stationery
- Day/time of day
- Material
- Quantity of litter at location
- Location where litter was dropped
- Distance from bin
- Is it recyclable?
- What category is it?
- Is it recycled locally?
Ideas for data to collect
Now that we have decided what data to collect, we need to consider how we will collect and store it.
As we are going to collect this data ourselves, how should we go about it?
Hint: To help with this, you should also consider what you might want to do with the data after collection.
You should use Microsoft Forms to collect the data.
Your teacher will show you how to create a form and the sort of questions you should include.
Collecting the data
Your homework is to collect the data.
You should attempt a minimum of 20 submissions to your form.
Make sure that you collect the data at different times in the school day (before school, at break time, at lunchtime) and in different locations.
Do not pick up litter without appropriate protection.
🏅 Level Up
🥇 Level 1
- Upload the Level 1 – The investigative cycle activity sheet to the Teams assignment.
🥈 Level 2
- Upload the Level 2 – Litter Bugs activity sheet to the Teams assignment.
🥉 Level 3
- Upload the data collection Excel sheet to the Teams assignment.
In this lesson, you…
- Identified a problem that could be solved by using data
- Planned what data you are going to collect to help you answer questions
- Decided on a method of data collection
Next lesson, you will…
- Enter your data into your spreadsheets/forms
- Upload the data in order to analyse your findings