LESSON OVERVIEW

With this data science lesson plan, students will learn a lot of advanced vocabulary related to the topic and put it into practice through a series of written and oral activities. They will also discover how data science is used in basketball and reflect on its possible use in other industries.

WARM-UP & DATA COLLOCATIONS

In small groups, students look at several collocations with the word data divided into three groups. They need to discuss their possible meanings and try to add more collocations to each group. Then, they read the definition of a data scientist and reflect on different aspects of this job, as well as the application of data science in different industries. They move on to a vocabulary task in which they analyse eight sets of words and have to choose the odd one out. Next, they look at the sets again and have to find a set with three words that don’t collocate with data. The following exercise helps students understand the meanings of some of the words included in the sets. They’re given seven definitions and have to decide which expressions with the word data are defined. The last activity in this part of the lesson is a case study which involves analysing data, forming hypotheses and coming up with solutions to a problem experienced by an online food delivery platform.

VIDEO & LANGUAGE PRACTICE

The second part of the lesson starts with a video about the use of data science in basketball. Before watching it, students discuss how the scoring in basketball works and how many points a dunk shot is awarded. They watch the video and answer six specific questions. Afterwards, they engage in a discussion about the use of data science in sports. The listening part is followed by more language practice. First, students read nine sentences taken from the video with highlighted words and phrases and try to guess their meanings (e.g. mediocrity, granular, bang for buck). Next, they analyse ten sentences involving the words from the previous exercise and have to predict who might have said them and in what situation. The aim of the following task is to write a short summary of the video using the words or phrases given. Finally, students have to imagine how data science could be applied to a specific problem in their industry or field of interest. They need to define the problem, think of a goal, suggest a solution and what data will enable them to achieve the goal and later verify the solution’s impact. They share their study with the other classmates.