Our data science sequence starts in fifth grade, where we introduce students to spreadsheets and teach them to analyze data in descriptive ways. As students move through middle school, they develop a broader and deeper skillset, learning how to source and clean data themselves, frame problems, and build predictive models. Rock Creek students finish middle school with a thorough understanding of how and when to use spreadsheets, both to analyze historical data and to model future outcomes.

Our middle school data science sequence is connected to our science and social science classes. Students complete projects, which dive into topics that are concurrently being taught in science and social science courses using real-world data. For example, when 5th-graders learn about DC in the course, Citizenship: Local & National, they conduct a companion data science project analyzing the economic and demographic data of DC’s wards. Likewise, when students learn about climate change in 6th grade science, they do a project analyzing historical climate data to identify and predict shifting weather patterns around the world. Teaching data science allows students to conduct meaningful, relevant research, and when students see that their schoolwork is relevant, they are more interested and engaged in class.

Real life doesn’t hand out math worksheets. It hands out problems and possibilities where math can sometimes be applied to chart out better courses of action. There are a lot of skills required to usefully apply math in these situations: you have to frame the problem, find and clean data, and identify the math that to use. Actually using the math from math class is only a minor, though necessary, step. By offering a data science sequence alongside our math sequence, Rock Creek students learn how to apply the math they are learning.

Not only does this increase the likelihood that our students will be able to transfer their math skills to other real word contexts, it also provides opportunities for spaced retrieval and interleaving of concepts from math class. Together, transfer practice, interleaving, and spaced retrieval make our students’ math knowledge far more durable.

Building a strong data science foundation in middle school allows us to offer some really fun electives in high school! Students who have completed our middle school data science sequence will be able to enroll in exciting high school electives like Predicting Climate Change, Sports Analysis, and the Data of Social Justice. These are the fun classes we at Rock Creek wish we got to take in high school. High schoolers also have the opportunity to tackle a research capstone project, in which they dive into data on a topic of their choice.

Once you know how to work with data, you don’t have to rely on others' opinions—you can do your own analysis and come to your own conclusions. All of our data science classes offer students the opportunity to take the pen: to come to their own conclusions based on evidence. Data science is a tool that lets us see the world through a quantitative lens; it helps us identify opportunities, solve problems, and make breakthroughs.