How to Teach Probability at the Primary Level of Education
At the primary level, teachers simply introduce the basic ideas of probability to students to help them understand the difference between chance and probability and also determine probable outcomes. For students at this level, the best ways to teach probability involve hands-on activities with objects and situations that students encounter in their everyday lives.
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Things You'll Need
- Small bags of M&M's candy
- Crayons
- Paper cups
- Graph paper
- Notebook paper
- Pencil
Instructions
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The Activity
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1
Explain to students that they are going to be learning about probability, which is the chance of something happening.
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2
Tell students that M&M's come in the colors orange, red, blue, green, brown and yellow. Ask them to predict which color they think will occur most in their bag of M&M's and write down why they think that.
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3
Ask students to predict which color they think will occur least in their bag and write down their reasoning behind that hypothesis.
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4
Give each student a bag of M&M's and have them open the bag to see the colors of M&M's that are inside it. On a sheet of paper they will list each of the colors the bag contains (some bags may not contain all colors), leaving space to write tally marks beside or below each color.
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5
Have students each put their M&M's into a small paper cup. Without looking, they should pull out an M&M from the cup and make a tally mark beside its color. Repeat 15 to 20 times.
Charting the Results
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Using their crayons and graph paper, students should make a graph with a colored box for each M&M they pulled out of the cup. The graph should be arranged with one color in each row.
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7
Looking at the graph, have students answer the following questions. Based on the graph, which color was pulled out the most? Which color was pulled out the least?
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Have students go back to their hypotheses and determine if they were correct.
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9
Compare the graphs of all students in the class by making a class graph to represent all of the M&M's to see which colors are the most likely and least likely to occur.
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Tips & Warnings
Any kind of candy with multiple colors, such as Skittles, Smarties or Jelly Beans, can be used if M&M's are not available or children are allergic to chocolate.
