Teaching sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

10 minutes

Part A: Unsustainable fishing

10 minutes

Part B: Understand the context – Data immersion

40 minutes

Part C: Data analysis

15 minutes

Part D: Share and reflect

Learning intentions:

Students will:

organise and analyse a large data set in order to draw conclusions about the fishing industry in Australia.

Success criteria:

Students can:

be able to use Microsoft Excel to organise a large data set
be able to describe bivariate data presented in a table or graph
be able to use data to draw conclusions about a societal issue.

Part A: Introduction - unsustainable fishing

Step 1

Explain to students that in this lesson, they will be using maths to analyse one of the ocean’s biggest predators: the fishing industry. Begin the lesson by inviting students to participate in a class brainstorm around the following questions:

What do you already know about the fishing industry?
What do you think unsustainable fishing is?
What statistics might be used to describe the problem of unsustainable fishing?
How can fish be more sustainably caught?

Record student suggestions on the board.

Step 2

Watch the following clip as a class. As students watch, invite them to record any information relevant to the topics and ideas shared in the brainstorm in their workbook.

Unsustainable fishing (https://vimeo.com/1056608479/d7c167898e)

Step 3

After the clip, invite students to share their thoughts and invite them to return to the issues raised in the brainstorm and consider the following points:

What points would you now like to add to the brainstorm?
What points would you remove from the brainstorm following your watching of this clip?
What did this clip make you think about?
What questions does this clip leave you with?

Part B: Understand the context – data immersion

Step 1

Now turn students’ attention to the Annual Logbook Catch-Data, projecting the document for students to see. This data is sourced from the Commonwealth Fisheries annual catch data.

Discuss what the name of this data set means (i.e. the reported amount of fish and other marine life that is caught each year). Check if students are unsure about the meaning of any of the terms in the data set, as listed below (see the Glossary tab in the document for more details).

Column 1 - Fishery - Owners of the fishery
Column 2 - Year - Year of catchment
Column 3 - Scientific name - Name of organism
Column 4 - CAAB - Codes for Aquatic Australian Biota

Explain to students that, on its own, this document just has a whole lot of information and might not look like anything interesting - but imagine looking at this data from the perspective of someone who cares about the impact of overfishing on our oceans.

Ask students: “Why would this data be collected?" Invite students to discuss their ideas with the person next to them.

Give students a few minutes to talk about this question in pairs, and then briefly discuss responses as a class.

Step 2

Explain to students: when documentaries (e.g. such as the documentary Blue, which is where the Unsustainable Fishing clip came from) and other places use statistics, those statistics come from data sets like this. Thousands of pieces of information are carefully collected and then analysed by data scientists, who can then show the data to use as evidence. Today, you’re going to be a data scientist and work out exactly what’s happening in Australia’s fishing industry.

Part C: Data analysis

Step 1

As a class, go through the Student Worksheet, checking if students are unsure about the meaning of any steps or questions. You can ask students clarifying questions, such as:

What will you be creating in Part 1?
- Suggested answer: a table (known as a Pivot Table) and a graph (known as a Pivot Chart).
What information in the data set will you be focusing on?
- Suggested answer: Gear, Year, and Retained Catch (kg).
In Part 2, what information will you be using to answer the questions?
- Suggested answer: the Pivot Table and the Pivot Chart that have been created, and the link to Fishing Gear that is accessed from the Glossary tab.

Step 2

As students work, support them by providing prompts and asking questions. Students may find it useful to work in pairs, especially when creating the Pivot Table and Pivot Chart.

There are several extensions to this task. For example, students could:
- see if any of the species in the data set are protected and analyse how much have been caught over time.
- consider what else a data scientist would be interested in, and create other types of Pivot Charts/Tables.
- turn the findings of the analysis into an infographic.

Part D: Share and reflect

Step 1

As a class, go through the solutions to Part 2 of the Student Worksheet.

Step 2

Ask students to work independently to reflect on what they have learned about organising and analysing large amounts of data using the following questions (also available on the Student Worksheet):

Why is it important to be able to organise a data set into a graph/table?
Out of all of the information in the data set, why do you think you focused on Gear, Year and Retained Catch? Why are those three things useful to analyse?
What tips would you give another student to help them use Microsoft Excel?

In addition, return to the questions posed to students prior to the clip and invite students to answer these questions again and reflect on how their thinking might have changed in response to these questions over the course of this lesson.

The following questions are available on the Student Worksheet:

What I used to think about fishing and unsustainable fishing in Australia...
What I now think about fishing and unsustainable fishing in Australia...
What action will I take as a result of my learning...

Assessment

What can the students do, say, make or write?

Students can use Microsoft Excel to organise a large data set into a table and graph. Students can describe bivariate data presented in a table or graph. Students can use data to draw conclusions about a societal issue.

Take it further

Invite students to apply their learning in a real-world context by participating in this Social Action lesson: Ocean Guardian Campaigns - Social Action - Year 9 & 10.

Blue - Do the Maths on Australia's Fishing Industry

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Summary

Learning intentions:

Students will:

Success criteria:

Students can:

Lesson Guides and Printables

Lesson Details

Skills

Curriculum Mapping

Resources Required

UN Sustainable Development Goals

Additional Info

Related Professional Learning

In this lesson