Building the language of probability: Vocabulary, visualisations and concepts

The purpose of this wāhanga is to highlight the importance of developing students’ probability language and vocabulary in concert with visualisations and concept development. In Section 3.2, we outline the challenges of learning probability language and aspects of language acquisition that are needed for growing students’ probability vocabulary. In Section 3.3, we discuss teaching and learning considerations when building students’ probability vocabulary, giving two examples of how teachers can provide support to students in understanding, using, and recognising probabilistic language. We also briefly describe a vocabulary activity that can assist in the acquisition of probability terms. In Section 3.4, as a case study, we take the term, sample space, to discuss teaching and learning implications and approaches to growing students’ sample space conceptions, language, and visualisations from simple discrete outcomes to continuous probability distributions. A teaching and learning activity is given to illustrate how students’ conceptions of sample space could be developed. Other considerations about sample space are also discussed, followed by a wāhanga summary in Section 3.5. Sections 3.6 to 3.8, respectively, give a possible progression for Years 1 to 13 for building the language of probability, suggested teaching and learning activities for each year level, and a glossary of terms used in the wāhanga.