Class Profile: I teach at a small middle/high school in a rural farming community.

Special Strategies: There are no SPED students in this class, but there are a few who find the material difficult, or who rarely choose to put forth the necessary effort.

 To reach those who are struggling, I will frequently survey the class to check for understanding. I will elaborate or explain differently when it seems needed, even if a student does not specifically ask me to do so. I will continue to encourage my students to feel free to ask questions in class, but I do not want them to miss important concepts because they were too self-conscious to ask for help. If a specific student needs more help than I can provide within the allotted class time, I will discreetly suggest that he or she come see me for help outside of class time.

To help motivate an underachiever, I will give each student an opportunity to explain to the class a challenging problem that he or she seems to understand—even the underachievers like to show off. I will also provide time for the students to work on the assignment in groups, and throughout this time I will frequently check on students’ progress.

For any exchange student, I am very careful to enunciate and to not speak too quickly. I look at him/her frequently to check for signs of understanding or confusion. During the assignment I occasionally ask random students how they are progressing—I don’t want to single anyone out, but if I don’t ask them they probably won’t let me know that they’re struggling. They are always allowed to use language dictionaries, even on tests.

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Objective: Student will be able to graph parabolas and find the vertex and the axis of symmetry.

                   Student will be able to identify the vertex and axis of symmetry through graphing.

                  Student will be able to identify the vertex and axis of symmetry through algebra.

Mathematics EALRS: 1.1—Understand and apply concepts and procedures from number sense (computation).

1.3—Understand and apply concepts and procedures from geometric sense (shape and dimension, transformations).

1.5—Understand and apply concepts and procedures from algebraic sense (relations, operations).

How does this lesson fit into the current unit? The most recent lesson was on solving quadratic equations (the graph of this type of equation is a parabola). The lesson following this will be on analyzing quadratic functions, and finding their minimum and maximum values.

How does this lesson connect to students’ prior knowledge and interests? These skills are useful for finding minimum and maximum areas, the height of a football kick or basketball shot, etc. Professionals who need to be able to do this include statisticians, medical personnel, engineers, accountants, architects, and many others.[1]

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3-Day Plan—Day 1:

Ø      Give a “pop quiz” consisting of one problem—a pre-assessment. The students will have five minutes to solve the problem. Each student will write his/her start time and end time.

Ø      Present lesson, frequently checking for student understanding both by asking for volunteers to answer questions and by simply assessing facial expressions and body language. (I may need to continue the lesson the next day.)

Click here to link to PowerPoint parabola lesson, including pre- and post-assessments.

3-Day Plan—Day 2:

Ø      Finish lesson if necessary, then repeat the pre-assessment quiz, this time as a post-assessment, with students providing written explanations of the reasoning process.

Ø       Reveal the correct solution, and have students compare their two answers. For any students who solved the problem correctly both times, have them compare the amount of time that it took them each time—the second time should be faster, because they now have a more efficient strategy to use.

Ø      Have them write down what part of the lesson they understood most (and why), and what part they understood least (and why).

Ø      Announce assignment and tell students to work diligently, in groups or independently, for the remaining time—remind them to ask me questions if they need to, even if that means stopping by for a few minutes later in the day.

Ø      Provide them with the URL for a website that does math tutorials, in case they need extra help tonight while working on the assignment.

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3-Day Plan—Day 3:

Ø      Go over the assignment.

Ø      Explain the procedure for graphing parabolas on the graphing calculator.

Ø      Give students a list of equations, half of which they must graph manually, and half of which they must graph using the calculator (four or five different lists, so not everyone is doing the same problems).

Ø      Inform students that over the next couple of days, each of them will present/explain at least one problem to the rest of the class—any student who would like to earn extra credit may present more than one problem.

Ø      As another extra credit opportunity, suggest that each student choose a quadratic equation from last night’s homework and write a story problem based on that equation. These problems may be included in the next test.

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