Children's Books
Using Children's Books to Understand Probability, Percent, Ratios, and Circles
The beginning of this unit plan can be found here.
Lesson 5
Today's
lesson is going to take everything we have learned in the previous
lessons and combine them. Hopefully the other lessons have introduced
combining the mathematics but today this will be driven home. I
really want today to be more like a work day and not a teaching day.
I want to read A
Very Improbable Story and
for them to do the rest of the project with almost no instruction
from me. I plan on walking around while they are working on their
projects but hopefully in their groups they will be able to answer
each other's questions without any of my help. This is how the
differentiation will be done in this lesson. Also I will spend more
time with groups which I feel might struggle more.
The
students will create projects on this units ideas and I plan on
hanging them in my room. I believe this creates an atmosphere of
learning and builds relationship with students. Also if the projects
are going up and will be on display I believe the studens will work
harder because people will be able to view it. Also the project will
serve as the formal assessment of the entire unit because if they can
create circle graphs they can accomplish all of the necessary steps
to create them, therefore they have all of the skills. Working in
groups might hurt this but I believe they have to create their own
they will have to learn from someone else how to do this. Also I
think working in groups on a project is very more real life than
working by themselves on a test. Cooperation is important in the real
world so it should be important in your classroom. Finally this unit
will bring closure because they will use the math they learned in
this unit again but they created a project based on this material
which will not be expected of them again.
Standards:
- Journalism
- The student will understand and utilize oral, written, and visual communication.
- Apply terms and expressions common to the industry to speaking, listening, and writing activities. (This will support my lesson because the student will need to understand oral (me talking), written (the book's works), and visual (the books pictures) communication to create the math from it. Mathematics and probability have symbols which are unique to it which the students need to understand. This is the same standard as the first lesson but included today are the percent symbol and ratio symbol.)
- English 4
- CFU 3005.3.15 Generate notes while collecting information. (It is important for the student to take notes will collecting the information in this lesson because the notes created will allow the student to answer the probability questions. The first lesson was guided for the students where today the students will be expected to take and identify their own notes.)
- Finite Mathematics
- CLE 3182.1.6 Employ reading and writing to recognize the major themes of mathematical processes, the historical development of mathematics, and the connections between mathematics and the real world. (This is the whole goal of this lesson so we are going to finish with it. The student must take reading and turn it into mathematics. This like the first book has real world applications for the students.)
- CLE 3182.5.1 Develop concepts in probability, including sample spaces and event probabilities. (We will again hit on the topic of probability which was introduced in the first lesson but today we should be able to delve deeper into the subject. In delving deeper we are going to incorporate the other lessons into this one.)
Objectives:
- TSWBAT take probability written in language and turn it into mathematical terms.
- TSWBAT solve probability problems.
- TSWBAT turn the solutions for probability problems into percents, ratios, and circle graphs.
Assessment/Evaluation
- Today the students will be assessed informally by me when I walk around while they are working on their projects. Their formal assessment will be their completion of the project.
Materials
- A Very Improbable Story
- A Very Improbable Story PowerPoint
- SmartBoard
Activating Strategy
- Throughout this unit we have been working on probability and different displays of data. Today we are going to take everything we have learned so far and apply it in the book A Very Improbable Story. To do this we will need to remember the concepts of percents, ratios, probabilities, and the central angle theorem.
Instructions
The
first thing I am going to do today is go over their homework. I am
going to start today's lesson with the activating strategy by telling
them today we are going to use everything we have learned previously
in this unit to complete a project. I will remind them of the
concepts of percents, ratios, probability, and the central angle
theorem by asking the students to define each of those terms. I am
then going to give them the directions for the project. They are I am
going to read the book A
Very Improbable Story and
they are to take notes on it. Form their notes they are going to take
one of the probability problems mentioned in the book and solve it.
Using their solutions they need to create ratios and percents that
represent the probabilities. Using those percents create a circle
graph to represent the probability problem. I will then read the book
and while reading the book go through a PowerPoint which has the
probability problems laid out making it easier on the students. After
the book is finished the students will work on one of the probability
problems and create the project from it. After they have selected the
problem I will group them by problem I will walk around while they
are working and provide support for the students. They will work on
the problems with their group but be expected to create their own
project. Materials will be provided. After they have completed their
project I am going to hang them in the classroom. If they do not
complete the project in class then they will be expected to take it
home and work on it for homework. This will be the formal summative
assessment of the unit.
Book
- The book I am going to use is called A Very Improbable Story and it is going to support my lesson in many of the same ways as the first book in this unit. The book contains a variety of probability problems. It does not deal with the concepts of a certain, uncertain, or impossible event but the word problems in it are more difficult. Again it shows probability in real life which is an important emphasis. It show probability dealing with sports, gambling, and food. This book delves more deep than the first book in this unit in dealing with probability because its expectation is for the students to take the probability and draw conclusions from it. Finally this book I believe is the best illustrated so therefore it will hold my students attention the best.
Background
- Professions that use probability include Actuarial Science, Atmospheric Science, Bioinformatics, Biomathematics Biostatistics, Ecological/Environmental Statistics, Educational Testing and Measurement, Environmental Health Sciences, Epidemiology, Financial Engineering/Financial Mathematics/Mathematical Finance/Quantitative, Finance, Government Service , Industrial Statistics, Mathematical Biology, Medicine, Meteorology/Atmospheric Science, Nursing Research, Operations Research, Pharmaceutical Research, Public Health, Public Policy, Quality Improvement, Reliability, Risk Analysis (also known as Risk Assessment), Risk Management and Insurance Social Statistics, Statistical Computing, Statistics, and Survey Research.
Reflection
- This unit is the kind of unit I really enjoy and believe my students would really enjoy. It answers the question of why we learn certain things in mathematics and ties several mathematical concepts together which will hopefully allow them to remember better. Also I would much rather have them complete a project at the end of a unit than a test because they will be the expectation in real life. I also really like how this unit is circular which allowed me to come back to where we started. I believe I need to stress why I did this to the students in this final lesson otherwise they might say we have already done this and not participate.
- After this lesson I need to survey the students on if they preferred this unit to the ones we traditionally do and if they would rather complete a project as opposed to taking a test. I would like to know this information because the goal is for the students to learn something and have as much fun as possible so if they did not prefer this then I need to change something in it. I enjoyed doing this lesson and the unit because it has made me reflect on what I do on a daily basis in my class and how I can improve my instruction.
Continue on to Lesson: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
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