Overview
This week you built a foundation in how data is collected, organized, queried, and mined for patterns. You explored the data investigation cycle, the relational model, SQL querying, and six data mining techniques. These are genuinely foundational ideas in modern computing — but knowing them yourself and knowing how to teach them are two different things.
The pages linked below are organized by grade band. Each one addresses the same Week 5 content from the perspective of a teacher working with students at that level: what depth is appropriate, what misconceptions to expect, what instructional approaches tend to work, and what connections to the broader CS curriculum are worth making.
Find your grade band and read that page before your small group discussion. If you teach across grade levels, or are curious about approaches above or below your own, you are welcome to read more than one.
Choose Your Grade Band
Elementary — Teaching Data and Databases in K-5
Emphasis on building intuition about what data is, organizing information with simple tables, and connecting data ideas to the sorting and categorizing work students already do.
Middle School — Teaching Data and Databases in Grades 6-8
Emphasis on the data investigation cycle as a classroom framework, common misconceptions about what data can and cannot tell us, and introductory database concepts through concrete school-based scenarios.
High School — Teaching Data and Databases in Grades 9-12
Emphasis on SQL fluency, database design principles, data mining techniques, and the ethical dimensions of data-driven systems — with connections to AP courses and real-world professional contexts.