Anna Cajiga, Jenni Whitefield, Trisha Sloan
TE 401
Shop and Save Day One 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 be using grocery store advertisements to complete shopping lists and solve money problems. 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. By using the grocery store ads, the 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 children will not be able to solve the problems without looking through the circulars that we provide. The items that we ask them to shop for require different methods of mathematics. We ask questions like; “if Capri Sun’s are 3 for $5, how many boxes can you get with $10?” Although this problem appears to be simple, it requires students to first figure out what method they should use to solve the problem, and then they must use that method correctly to find the answer. There are more challenging problems for the students that are more able and motivated. We made a worksheet for students that features seven problems, which increase in difficulty as you move further along. Problem number four on our worksheet is going to be used for a class discussion because this problem will allow students to share their various ways of thinking so that other students can get different ideas about how to solve the problem.
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. This lesson also requires the students to read from a grocery ad. The students that struggle with reading may find this task difficult, but the pictures in the advertisement should help guide their thinking. Some of the problems require that the students first use addition and then finish by using subtraction to find out how much change they will get back. 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 word problems and figure out what type of mathematics needs to be done in order to solve the problem. 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 problem. We also hope that students will learn to solve problems in a variety of ways, for example, by drawing pictures, using manipulatives, solving equations, or their 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 a copy of the worksheet for each student in the class. We have two versions of this worksheet, but both versions have the same seven questions. The only difference is that one worksheet is intended for students who still struggle with some of the mathematical concepts in this activity (mainly the 4th graders). This version of the worksheet scaffolds their work by first stating the question, and then breaking down the question into pieces, so the students do not become overwhelmed by so many things being asked at once. 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:
Pretend you only have $15.00, but you are VERY hungry. You want to go shopping for all of your favorite foods. Make a shopping list in which the total amount of money is as close to $15.00 as you can get without going over.
What if you wanted to buy four of every item on your list? How much money would you need?
Uh oh! You got to the cash register and realized you really only have $12.00 in your wallet. What can you take off of your shopping list so that you have enough money to make your purchase?
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 of play money (consisting of $20, $10, $5 and $1 dollar bills, and coins) 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 using sales advertisements from grocery stores, so the students know how to browse the advertisement to find what they need, and they are familiar with what the various numbers represent (prices, quantities, weights and volumes). We are not allowing the children any time to play with the money or look through the sales advertisement 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 both of these objects.
6. Beginning the lesson
We are going to begin this lesson by asking the students to think of the last time they were at the grocery store. We will tell them, “Every week, the grocery store has different food and other items that go on sale, and it is printed in a magazine like the sales ad we have passed out. A lot of the time we want to get the best deals at the grocery store and so we buy items that are on sale. We always want to make sure that we have enough money with us to give the cashier and so what we’re going to do today is to practice figuring out what we can buy on a budget.” As a class we will do the first question on the worksheet together to be sure that they understand the problem and what we expect them to do. The first question is:
If you have $8.00, how many pounds of Washington Gala Apples can you buy? Will you have any money left over? How do you know?
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. 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 complete the questions on their worksheet using a method that makes 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 read the problem or the grocery ad, 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, or maybe they can’t find one of the items in the magazine, 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 saying “How much money are you starting with?” From there, we can help them decide how much money we are going to be taking away from that original amount. 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 not only more challenging, but allow for more creativity and independence. 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 might stop before they have actually answered the question.
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 question four on their worksheets, which reads:
You have $15.00 in your wallet. You buy six jars of Classico Pasta Sauce to make spaghetti for your family. The dinner is delicious, but everyone stains their shirts while they eat! Do you have enough left over to buy Purex Ultra Liquid Laundry Detergent to clean their clothes? How do you know?
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.
It will be very helpful for those students who struggled during the lesson to see the question answered in full by some of the others students. It will also be helpful for the students to see different ways in which the problem was done. 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.