Sample Sentence Starters
for Data Analysis
(Back to Teaching Suggestions)

Use these sentence starters to help students describe patterns, make predictions, find comparisons, share surprises and discoveries, formulate hypotheses, and ask questions .

Patterns:

  • I noticed a pattern when I looked at the data. The pattern is...
  • I see a pattern in the migration data collected so far. My graph shows....

Predictions:

  • Based on the patterns I see in the data collected so far, I predict that...
  • By next month, I expect to see the data reveal...
  • I predict that the turn-around date will be...
  • My prediction for this year's peak migration is...

Comparisons:

  • When I compared whale counts from Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, I noticed that...
  • When I compared this year's data with last year's counts, I noticed that...
  • There are similarities [or differences] between...

Surprises and Discoveries:

  • I discovered that...
  • I was surprised by...
  • I noticed something unusual about...

Hypotheses: (Possible Reasons for Data)

  • A possible explanation for what the data showed this week is...
  • A factor that affected this week's data might have been...
  • I think this week's data was affected by...

Questions:

  • I wonder why...
  • I wonder how...
  • How are gray whales affected by...
  • How will the migration change if...

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