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LESSON PLAN
Central Tendency — Mean, Median, and Mode
A
Apothem Team
Grade 8 · Data & Probability
LESSON AT A GLANCE
Warm-up
5 min
Instruction
15 min
Guided practice
15 min
Independent work
12 min
Exit ticket
3 min
Warm-up
Collect a quick class data set (e.g., number of pets) on sticky notes and order it on the board.
Instruction
Guided practice
Independent work
Exit ticket
Students compute central tendency for several data sets. Exit ticket: which measure is best for a given context, and why.
TIP Use a deliberately skewed data set so students feel why the median can beat the mean.
WORKED EXAMPLES
Find the mean, median, and mode of 4, 7, 7, 9, 13.
Mean = 40 ÷ 5 = 8; median = 7; mode = 7.
A house sells for 400,000 homes. Which average best describes the street?
The median — the $2 million sale is an outlier that inflates the mean.
MATERIALS
•Student notebooks
•Calculators
•Sticky notes for class data
•Board or projector
WATCH FOR
!Forgetting to order the data before finding the median.
!Assuming every data set has a single mode (it may have none or several).