Starting the class with a short survey with about 10 questions that are very easy to answer. The questions will all be multiple choice with one open ended question. All of the classes answers will show up on the Smart board and each set of 4 students will find their specific answers for their group and analyze it. Put all four of their answers into a bar graph, pie chart, or graph of their choice. They will be figuring out which is best for their data. They will also figure out it is harder to summarize open ended answers, even for only four people. This will help them figure out how to word their research questions and what format is easiest for people to take the survey.
What a fun strategy to get students thinking about data - what questions to ask around data, different ways of collecting data, how reading data in a variety of formats may not be helpful, what types of graphs or visual representations best represent the data, etc.