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Theodore Bear
Task
The new Theodore Bear Company has hired you as a marketing consultant. They are designing teddy bears to sell to fourth and fifth grade students and would like to know what features are most typical for teddy bears owned by students your age. Their largest competitors are the Vermont Teddy Bear Company. In order to survive in the tough teddy bear market, they need your expertise and input on this important matter.
Select information to investigate. (No more than 2 questions due to time constraints.) - Collect data
- Organize data
- Draw conclusions
- Communicate your conclusion to the Theodore Bear Company Board of Directors in a letter addressed to the Chairperson of the Board.
You should communicate your solution in the following manner:- A letter that describes: the task; how you defined "typical"; what you did to get your conclusion; the reasoning behind your decision making; your conclusions about the typical teddy bear; "I noticed..." statements and recommendations to the company.
- A visual mathematical representation that supports your solution, so the chairperson of the board can use your representation to convince fellow board members of your conclusions.
- You will be graded on how well you understood the problem, on your strategy and decision making, on your "I noticed" statements, on your use of math language, on your mathematical representation and on your overall presentation.
Alternate Versions of Task
| More Accessible Version:
Determine the typical color teddy bear. Create and conduct a survey.
Organize your results in a graph. Analyze your results.
Draw conclusions about the typical colored teddy bear.
More Challenging Version:
The new Theodore Bear Company has hired you as a marketing consultant. They are designing teddy bears to sell to fourth- and fifth-grade students, and would like to know what features are most typical for teddy bears owned by students your age. Their largest competitors are the Vermont Teddy Bear Company. In order to survive in the tough teddy bear market, they need your expertise and input on this important matter.
Determine the typical teddy bear of fourth and fifth graders.
Compare the results to qualities of bears from the Vermont Teddy Bear Company. Are there more similarities or differences?
Select information to investigate. (No more than 2 questions due to time constraints.) - Collect data
- Organize data
- Draw conclusions
- Communicate your conclusion to the Theodore Bear Company Board of Directors in a letter addressed to the Chairperson of the Board
You should communicate your solution in the following manner:
A letter that describes... - The task
- How you defined “typical"
- What you did to get your conclusion, and the reasoning behind your decision making
- Your conclusions about the typical teddy bear
- “I noticed..." statements
- Recommendations to the company
- A visual mathematical representation that supports your solution so the chairperson of the board can use your representation to convince fellow board members of your conclusions
You will be graded on how well you understood the problem, on your strategy and decision making, on your “ I noticed…” statements, on your use of math language, on your mathematical representation, and on your overall presentation.
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Context
Every week, my team teaching partner and I choose a special way to celebrate Friday. This particular week, we chose Teddy Bear Day, where students brought in their teddy bears to share. In math class we presented this problem for students to solve with the assistance of their bears! What This Task Accomplishes
This task provides students with an open-ended task that is hands-on in nature. It allows students to bring to the task their own "bag of math tricks" while at the same time focusing on statistics.
What the Student Will Do
Students will begin by defining "typical." They will collect and organize their data, draw conclusions and then make recommendations to the company.
Time Required for the Task
2 hours
Interdisciplinary Links
This activity is similar to the task "Define the Typical Member of Our Class" (Exemplars, Volume 2, Number 3, November, 1994.), except I found students to be more creative and more mathematically engaged while approaching this task. As a follow-up to this activity you might have students define other typical groups.
Teaching Tips
I made sure to have extra bears on hand that students could borrow in case they either did not have one or forgot theirs at home.
Suggested Materials- Measuring tape, rulers and yard sticks
- Scales and gram stackers
- Chart paper
- Unifix cubes
- Calculators
- Computers
- Markers
- Crayons
- Stickers
- Sticky notes
- Paper clips
- Graph paper
- Stencils
- Class lists
Possible Solutions
Solutions will vary depending on the type of investigations students perform. Some students will provide a very basic response, while others may get into averages including the mean, mode and median.
| More Accessible Version Solution:
As with the original version, solutions will vary. Look for well-documented work, correctness of mathematics used, and logic and reasoning.
More Challenging Version Solution:
As with the original version, solutions will vary depending upon the data collected. Look for well-documented work, correctness of mathematics used, and logical reasoning.
With this version of the task, the student needs to have work to support a conclusion on whether there are more similarities or differences between student teddy bears and those from the Vermont Teddy Bear Company.
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Task Specific Assessment Notes
Novice:
A solution that has not addressed "typical." A solution that makes no mathematical conclusion. A solution that misunderstands the task: Making a recommendation to the company. A solution that does not attempt to display information in a meaningful way. A solution that has no reasoning or has incorrect reasoning. A solution that has so many mathematical errors that an accurate conclusion could not be drawn. A solution which has week or random collection of information.
Apprentice:
A solution which addresses typical based on one criterion. A solution which makes a basic mathematical conclusion. A solution which attempts to display information in a meaningful way. A solution which has some correct reasoning. A solution which may have a few mathematical errors. A solution which has a basic method for the collection of information.
Practitioner:
A solution which addresses typical based on two criteria. A solution which makes a sound mathematical conclusion. A solution which displays information in a meaningful way. A solution which exhibits clear, correct reasoning. A solution free of mathematical errors. A solution with a methodical and reasoned system for data collection.
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Expert:
A solution that addresses typical based on two criteria and makes a mathematical connection among the two. A solution that makes a sophisticated mathematical conclusion that may include a percentage, ratio or average. A solution that displays information in a sophisticated fashion (may combine two types of information in one representation). A solution that clearly explains reasoning and decision making. A solution in which a sophisticated method of data collection is used (utilizing resources other than simply questioning peers orally, perhaps using a spreadsheet or data base, a written survey or random sampling).
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