Lesson Plan

Degrees of Confidence

Grade Level: 6-12

Length: 1-15 minutes

DE Domain: TP

In this activity, students practice adding degrees of confidence to their estimations and predictions about various topics.

Incorporating numeracy into predictions and estimations of the world can help deepen the precision with which we communicate and understand uncertainty. This integrated activity encourages students to demonstrate a truth-seeking mindset by naming their degree of confidence related to certain beliefs and considering what information would make them more or less confident.

TP.3 – Use probabilistic thinking to evaluate evidence and truth claims, and to update beliefs

What to look and listen for: Can students identify their personal goals and values? Can students identify actions they can take to support an outcome they desire? Notice values and struggles that the class has in common. Are there trends to share? Are students able to identify ways to create a sustainable balance between what they care about and what they want to achieve?

Lesson:

Briefly introduce the concept of Degrees of Confidence.

Suggested key points:

  • Our brains are hard-wired for overconfidence: we often think that we’re right even when we do not have complete data or evidence to support our thinking.
  • Adding a degree of confidence in the form of a percentage (e.g., I am 75% confident that…) invites us to consider the likelihood we could be wrong and helps us to think more critically about our estimation or belief.

Guide the class through a few examples with topics relevant to your content area or their school lives.

Possible examples:

  • How confident are you that you are prepared for the upcoming quiz?
  • How confident are you that your understanding of [X concept] is accurate?
  • How confident are you that you will complete [X assignment] on time?

To push their thinking, ask probing questions.

Suggested questions:

  • What is your rationale?
  • What information might make you feel more or less confident?

Throughout your regularly planned content area lesson, plan for opportunities to ask students to add degrees of confidence (in the form of percentages) to their statements.

Suggest prompts:

  • How confident are you in that answer?
  • What information might make you feel more or less confident?
  • Have you noticed changes in your confidence as you gained more information?

Over the course of multiple class periods or days, prompt your students to provide a degree of confidence to their beliefs and estimations. Encourage them to give rationales for their confidence levels. Help them to notice if and when their confidence levels change and what new information impacts their level of certainty. Share your own degrees of confidence when appropriate and the rationales behind them (“I am 80% sure that… because…”)

Embedding these opportunities to incorporate numeracy into regular classroom conversations supports a culture of intellectual humility and truth-seeking, in addition to building students’ ease and comfort with thinking probabilistically.

Differentiation:

For students that need support with numeracy, provide probabilities for them to choose from: “Is your confidence closer to 0, 25, 50, 75, or 100%?”

Optional extensions:

Conduct a closing discussion or reflection on Degrees of Confidence:

Possible discussion questions:

  • Which numbers did you find were easiest to have a feeling about?
  • At any point did you realize you were more or less confident that you assumed at first?
  • How might forecasting on how confident you are in your belief help you make decisions or form judgements?

 

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