A woman from Salford, near Manchester, has a chance of claiming the world record for being the world’s fastest texter after she had a go at a competition while she was out shopping.

The world record attempt was to gain publicity for a new touch screen phone and it was this phone that was used. Is a touch screen phone faster for texting than a push button phone? How much faster? How would you find out? The phrase that she had to text was… It took her just seconds!

It’s in the News! The world’s fastest texter Teacher Notes

The world’s fastest texter Introduction: A Salford woman has a claim to the title of World’s Fastest Texter having stopped at a phone manufacturer’s promotional stand in an outlet village and typing the sentence: “The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human.” in just seconds using a new touch screen mobile. But how much faster is a touch screen than a more traditional push button mobile phone? This resource provides a context for students to design an experiment to test a hypothesis that touch screen phones are faster to text with and then collect and compare the data about the two different types of mobile phone. Content objectives: This context provides the opportunity for teachers and students to explore a number of objectives. Some that may be addressed are: calculate statistics and select those most appropriate to the problem or which address the questions posed design a survey or experiment to capture the necessary data from one or more sources; design, trial and if necessary refine data collection sheets; construct tables for gathering large discrete and continuous sets of raw data, choosing suitable class intervals write about and discuss the results of a statistical enquiry using ICT as appropriate; justify the methods used. Process objectives: These will depend on the amount of freedom you allow your class with the activity. It might be worth considering how you’re going to deliver the activity and highlighting the processes that this will allow on the diagram below:

Activity: The activity provides a context for students to access the data handling cycle at a variety of points. Students are introduced to the woman who was able to type, “The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human.” in just seconds using a touch screen mobile phone, and are asked to consider how much faster a touch screen phone is for texting when compared to a more traditional push button mobile. The task itself is left open to allow the context to be accessible for all abilities, however, it is likely that students will want to design and conduct some sort of survey or experiment to collect data and then to analyse this to come to a conclusion. The accuracy and detail of the experiment and conclusion is left to you and your class to decide. Differentiation: You may decide to change the level of challenge for your group. To make the task easier you could consider: providing some scaffolding to support the students’ writing having a speed-texting competition in class and then discussing the validity of your results. To make the task more complex you could consider: reducing the scaffolding, asking the students to work through each of the four stages of the data handling cycle to work towards a solution asking the students to consider whether certain words or phrases are easier on a push button or touch screen phone. This resource is designed to be adapted to your requirements. Working in groups: This activity lends itself to paired work and small group work and, by encouraging students to work collaboratively, it is likely that you will allow them access to more of the key processes than if they were to work individually. You will need to think about how your class will work on this task. Will they work in pairs, threes or larger groups? If pupils are not used to working in groups in mathematics you may wish to spend some time talking about their rules and procedures to maximise the effectiveness and engagement of pupils in group work (You may wish to look at the SNS Pedagogy and practice pack Unit 10: Guidance for groupwork). You may wish to encourage the groups to delegate different areas of responsibility to specific group members. Assessment: You may wish to consider how you will assess the task and how you will record your assessment. This could include developing the assessment criteria with your class. You might choose to focus on the content objectives or on the process objectives. You might decide that this activity lends itself to comment-only marking or to student self-assessment. If you use the APP model of assessment then you might use this activity to help you in building a picture of your students’ understanding. Assessment criteria to focus on might be: develop own strategies for solving problems (Using and applying mathematics level 4). ask questions, plan how to answer them and collect the data required (Handling data level 5). communicate interpretations and results of a statistical survey using selected tables, graphs and diagrams in support (Handling data level 6).

Probing questions: These might include: how might you make sure that the results are fair? if you wanted to convince someone that a touch screen phone was faster, how would you set up the survey or experiment? would you get different results among different age groups? which age group do you think will text fastest? how much faster than average was the potential world record? You will need: The PowerPoint presentation. There are just two slides: The first slide sets the scene, showing students the news story from the BBC website. The second slide shows the text that was written and asks ‘Is a touch screen phone faster for texting than a push button phone? How much faster? How would you find out?’