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Working with Numbers
Introducing the Survey Assignment
Reading done in advance: None; we do this on the first day of
class, even if we intend to teach surveys as a later assignment
Lesson Objectives: students answer a question much like the
one Michael Frisch posed to his students. The experience gives students an
experience similar to the one Frisch discusses and the results will give
students data to analyze later as they begin to think about designing and
analyzing their own surveys.
Notes: If you use variation 2 below, you'll also find out what
associations and prior knowledge students have with writing, and you might
repeat the questions at the end of the term to see how the collective list has
changed during the course. This version, though, is also problematic since it
doesn't generate exactly the same kind of list that Frisch's questions
generated. We typically get a mixture of features of writing (paragraphs,
sentences, vocabulary), writing tools and resources (pens, computers,
dictionary) associations from different kinds of writing (research, creativity),
genres (poetry, letters, essays) and to a lesser degree associations with
processes of writing (analysis, evidence, revision, editing). These differences,
though, let us talk about the way Frisch's essay is a model but not an exact
template for the surveys they will want to do.
Version 1: Replicated from Michael Frisch, “American
History and the Structures of Collective Memory”
- Please write, without thinking about it too much, the
first 10 names that pop into your head in response to this prompt:
“American history from its beginning through the end of the Civil War.”
- Please write another list to the same prompt, but this
time excluding presidents, generals, statesmen, or other figures is official
public life.
Version 2: Modification of Frisch's questions for a
different subject
- Please write, without thinking about it too much, the
first 10 words that pop into your head in response to this prompt: “Writing
or English Composition”
- Please write another list to the same prompt, but this
time exclude any items that are emotional responses or teachers
Next Steps: have students read Frisch and/or the material in
Chapter 5 about Surveys. You might also collect the responses into data tables
and return to them for the analysis discussion. What do these results tell us?
What arguments or interpretations would we want to make based on these results?
See other resources for Teaching Inquiry
 
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