Teacher Resources
Making data sing so everyone can dance and tell the stories.
Teaching/Coaching Resources
Teachers of any subject can get their students involved. Whether your students focus on historical trends, scientific poetry, or creative mathematical visualizations, we want to support you and your students throughout this competition!
Please visit our “Contest Essentials” page for an overview of the contest.
We'd love to eventually have a special “teachers-only” page with sample graphs for all of the datasets. Or if you'd like to help create this page, please email abrickley.edu at gmail.com.
Participation in Data Jam can fulfill NGSS and MA STE Curriculum Guidelines. Click the link to learn how.
Click here for advice and encouragement from veteran Data Jam coaches from Hudson Data Jam, sponsored by the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies.
Veteran DJ teacher, Christine Adamson, shares her timeline for doing Data Jam with ALL of her 8th grade students, developed through experience. Links to other valuable resources are included on the pdf below.
SampleDataJamTimeline.pdfHow to support a great Data Jam project:
Step 1: Familiarize yourself with the resources on this webpage.
Step 2: Attend webinars/workshops (optional!) offered by our Schoolyard program.
Step 3: Pre-register your students for the competition.
Don’t worry if you don’t know how many teams of students you’ll have or what they’ll be studying yet. Registering tells us that you’re planning to get involved and gives us a chance to help your teams out. This also helps us plan the contest judging.
Pre-registrations are preferred online by Dec 15. ***All team information will be entered during project submission, not during registration.
Step 4: Submit parent/guardian consent forms.
Please distribute the link https://tinyurl.com/NES-DJ-PermissionForm or printable consent forms to each participating student. Receipt of a digitally signed form will be confirmed by an email to the listed teacher/team advisor. If using the printed form, copies must be uploaded (digitally) with project submissions.
Step 5: Support your students in their projects.
We encourage you to register early and request a classroom visit if you'd like, and email us if you have any questions about the data or your projects.
~~~~:~~~~
These worksheets and lessons may help students work through understanding Data Jam, choosing an appropriate dataset level, getting to know their datasets, and graphing their data.
Getting to Know Your Dataset: This sheet guides students through getting to know their dataset, from prior knowledge to understanding the metadata to graphing the data and analyzing the graph. It will help with report elements but is not a substitute for the final scientific report. (Thanks to JM of Our Sisters School for aligning this document to the rubric.)
Graph Choice Chart: This paper from the NSTA November 2014 issue of The Science Teacher has a chart that helps students choose the best type of graph for their particular science question.
Student Planning Sheet: This planning tool can help your classes break Data Jam down into small digestible steps with concrete deadlines.
Full Data Jam Scoring Rubric: This rubric will help guide the students towards the ultimate project as it includes a more detailed description of possible components and potential scores.
Don't hesitate to reach out (abrickley.edu at gmail.com) with any questions that you or your students have about the competition or the individual datasets. We can forward your questions to the appropriate person to get your students the most helpful answers about the science!