Anna Cajiga, Jenni Whitefield, Trisha Sloan
TE 401
Shop and Save Day Two Lesson Plan
December 5, 2005
1. Selecting/creating and analyzing a task(s)
With this lesson, we will be introducing children to the use of mathematics in a real world situation. The students will build on skills from the Shop and Save Day One lesson as we use the idea of shopping for groceries to solve math problems involving money. The students will be working with money manipulatives to help them in solving the problems. The money manipulatives (paper bills and plastic coins) will help the students to solve problems by counting their money, and the worksheet that we will pass out will allow them to represent their solutions with equations and words. Students will be asked to solve problems regarding budgeting and spending money, and they will be asked to compute totals in order to count out change. The math problems that our students will complete test both procedural knowledge as well as conceptual knowledge. This lesson will teach money equivalency while practicing addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division equations. Each problem requires the students to explain their thinking, which will help to assess their understanding of the concepts as well as the procedures they use to solve each problem. The items, prices and quantities on the shopping list that we give students require that different methods of mathematics are used. We have prepared more challenging problems for the students that are more able and motivated.
2. Anticipating problematic aspects of task
Many of the fourth graders in our class still struggle with basic addition, subtraction, division and multiplication skills. Because of this, it may be difficult for these students to first figure out which method they are supposed to use. Some students might also struggle with the repeated addition and subtraction that needs to be done in order to solve some of the problems. They have practice with this concept but it is still difficult for some students to understand when they need to use repeated addition or subtraction. The problems on this task are multi step questions that require students to use many computational skills within the same question to arrive at an answer. Some students may have trouble remembering to complete all the steps of the problem to ensure they are answering what the question is actually asking. Also, many of the students do not have a lot of practice with explaining their math work in words, so this lesson should challenge them to explain their thoughts in a clear and concise manner. We expect that our students will learn how to use money to shop in an economical way. This will demonstrate the usefulness of mathematics in the real world. By showing the students that shopping requires using math skills like adding and subtracting, the students will be able to gain more practice with these skills and will learn how to solve problems with a variety of different methods.
3. Learning goals for the lesson
One of our goals is that the students will be able to solve math problems by using money and prices found in a grocery store circular. The students will first learn how to read and interpret a grocery shopping list. They will then contemplate what type of mathematics needs to be done in order to determine how much money they are spending on different amounts of each item. Once the students figure out whether they need to add, subtract, multiply or divide, they will then compute an answer and explain in words how they solved the problems. We also hope that students will strengthen the skills that we practiced in Shop and Save Day One lesson, as we practiced solving problems in a variety of ways, for example, by drawing pictures, using manipulatives, solving equations, or students’ own invented methods. Our next goal is that students will gain more experience with explaining their thoughts in words, since so much of mathematics deals with mostly numbers. More practice with basic math skills is also a goal of this lesson because it is something that many of the fourth graders in our class need to work on. Finally, we expect that students will learn how to count and work with money in order to shop the most economically when given a budget.
4. Arranging Materials and Students
During this activity, all of the desks will be arranged so they are facing the front of the room, so that students can see the projector. This is an individual assignment, but the children are encouraged to help each other if needed, which is why we will have the students sitting in pairs. Before teaching this lesson, we will need 24 copies of the worksheet, one for each student in the class. For students who finish early, we will also prepare several challenge questions ahead of time. These challenge questions will be written on index cards so they can easily be distributed to students. The questions we will ask are as follows:
How many more pounds of Boneless Chuck Steak could you buy without going over your spending limit?
How many more ears of sweet corn could you buy without going over your spending limit?
How many more boxes of Jello Chocolate Pudding could you buy without going over your spending limit?
We will have a stack of blank paper at the front of the room available for students to use if they need extra room to draw pictures or work out equations. We are also going to need an overhead projector, blank overhead transparencies and overhead markers to demonstrate the first question and the last discussion question in front of the class. Our CT is providing us with play money (both paper bills and coins) that the students are going to be using as manipulatives throughout this activity. Approximately $65.00 (consisting of $20, $10, $5 and $1 dollar bills, and coins) of play money is available for each student. Each student will be expected to provide their own pencil.
5. Anticipating What Children are Bringing with them to the Lesson
What we anticipate children bringing to the lesson is prior knowledge of basic computation skills, that is, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. This lesson is going to give them practice in working with these computations, thus improving their abilities, and will also show how each mathematical computation can be used in combination with the others in real life situations. After talking with our CT, we also know that the students have prior knowledge of various units of money, and how money should be counted. Students are also familiar with base 10 concepts, which is helpful when dealing with money and making change. The students also have experience completing tasks individually and then actively participating in class discussions about mathematics. Our CT uses an overhead projector regularly during the school day, so students are used to this technology.
We are also expecting the children to know how to handle the play money, as they have used these manipulatives in the classroom before. The class has also done several activities involving shopping, so the students are familiar with what the various numbers on the list represent (prices, quantities, weights and volumes). We are not allowing the children any time to play with the money ahead of time, and we do not anticipate that this will be a problem because of their age and the fact that they have prior experience with this manipulative.
6. Beginning the lesson
We are going to begin this lesson by reminding students of the Shop and Save lesson from the previous day in which we used our math skills to help us shop on a budget. We will then ask students if they have ever helped their parents making a shopping list, and discuss how we decide what items to put on the list, making sure that children mention that price is one factor to consider. We will then tell children that today, we are going to have the chance to work with our own shopping lists, just like adults. We will pass out the worksheet, money, and blank paper for students to show their work on, and as a class we will fill out the first row on the shopping list chart from their worksheet. The first row looks like this:
Quantity Item Price Total
2 lbs. Spartan Supreme Ham $2.19 / pound ______
As we solve this problem, we will demonstrate how it can be solved by drawing a picture, using the money manipulatives, and also using equations to solve, just like in the Shop and Save Day One lesson. We will emphasize that no matter which of these methods we use, we always arrive at the same answer. We will also make it clear that these are not the only ways to solve the problems. After we have done the problem as a whole class, we will instruct the students to fill in the rest of the shopping list chart using whatever methods make the most sense to them. Clarification during the middle of the lesson that we anticipate the students needing is in regards to the reading portion or the procedure that they need to use. If needed, we will help the students by reviewing the facts presented on the grocery list, and if they are unsure of how to solve the problem, we will guide their thinking through questions that lead them toward discovering the answer for themselves.
7. Monitoring students in the middle part of the lesson
During the lesson we are going to be walking around to the different desks to monitor the student’s progress and to stop and help where needed. What we will be expecting to see are students hard at work trying to figure out the answers to the problems we have given them. If a student gets stuck on a question, perhaps they don’t know where to start, then one of us will try and walk them through it. A question that we could ask a student who has gotten stuck would be, “Do you know how to solve this problem?” and if they don’t we can help them by reviewing the important facts found on the shopping list (price and quantity), and then directing their thinking about how we would use these facts to figure out how much money we will be spending. We don’t think that we will need easier problems for the students because this is a concept they have dealt with before in class as well as a real world situations, so they should be familiar with it and understand. For the students who finish ahead of the others, we have bonus questions on index cards that we can give them that are more challenging. While we are walking around, we will also be checking to see that the students completed the problems. Since there are multiple steps to many of the questions, the students may get caught up or confused and fail to answer a question completely.
8. Bringing the Class Back Together to Discuss the Mathematics
To bring the class back together, we are going to discuss a problem that lends itself to be solved in many ways and involves addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, all in the same question. This will engage all of the different levels of learners that we have in the class, as each student will be able to explain how they solved the problem in their own way. This question will be presented by one of us and discussed as a class, representing some of the concepts that we have just finished doing in the worksheet. We will ask for volunteers to explain how they solved the last question on their worksheets, which reads:
While waiting to check out, you remember that you are saving to buy a new toy, and you do not want to spend more than $40.00 on groceries. What could you take off of the list to make sure you spend less than $40.00? How much less than $40.00 would you be spending after removing these items?
We will call on volunteers, and then will allow several students to describe their solutions to the class, or if they so choose, come up to the overhead to demonstrate their solution. If students are reluctant to volunteer, which we are not anticipating in this classroom, we will ask some prompting questions that suggest possible methods of solving the problem. If students still do not volunteer, we will use Popsicle sticks with the students’ names on them to choose students at random, and ask these children to explain how they solved the problem.
This question is a very good one for class discussion because each child will have a different answer, so every student will have something new to offer to the discussion. It will also be helpful for the students to see the many different answers to the problem because it will expose them to many different computation problems of varying difficulty that use different numbers. We are expecting that there will be some students who will be able to come up and volunteer, and then we will ask if everyone understands how this was done. If they don’t, then we will try to explain it again more clearly.