Start the school year off by getting to know your students. This simple poll is a great ice breaker and gets students engaged with data from the start!

Introduce students to the steps of the scientific method by conducting an experiment in paper airplane flights. Choose two different designs of airplanes (e.g. different fold patterns or adding weights like a paperclip to the nose). During the hypothesis phase ask students which airplane they think will travel farthest, and have them report their hypothesis using SAS DataFly. Then complete the experiment. Each student should throw both types of airplanes and note which airplane traveled farthest. Use the same DataFly session to collect their actual results. Discuss how the hypothesis and actual results varied. What did they discover? **IMPORTANT NOTE** Enable multiple selections from the same device so that students can answer twice.

See which career fields are most desired among your students. Are any areas far more popular than others?

Have students keep a log of total time spent reading over the course of a week then enter their total time in minutes. What trends do you see among the class? Is reading time skewed in a particular direction. Are there any outliers?

This activity is a great introduction to using multiple box plots to compare distributions. Ask students what they notice about the durations of their classmates' commutes. Which type of transportation generally takes the longest? The shortest? Which has the biggest range? Are there any outliers?

Encourage your students to commit to activities that help promote a sustainable planet. You can have students answer with activities they already do, plan to do, or both! Consider allowing students to answer the poll twice and using specific dot colors to differentiate from activities they already do and will do (e.g. a green dot for what they do already and pink for their commitment). You can also give the poll again in a month or so and see what behaviors have lasted.

Have students keep a log of total time spent reading over the course of a week AND how many pages they read during the week. Then have them enter their total time in minutes and pages read. What trends do you see among the class? Is there a relationship between minutes and pages? Are there any outliers?

This lesson offers a data based lens into inherited traits. Ask students to check on whether their parents have detached or attached earlobes then report back. Which trait is most common in the class? Is there evidence of inheritance when you consider parents?

This is a simple lesson to start talking about distributions and five-number summaries. How much sleep do most students get? What are the extremes? Consider toggling this visualization between histogram and box plot to show different representations.

This simple poll is great for kids who are excited for Halloween. It's also a great way to show different ways to represent data. Toggle back and forth between chart types and see how the data looks the same or different.