Opener: As students enter the room, they will immediately pick up and begin working on the opener. Please see my instructional strategy clip for how openers work in my classroom (Instructional Strategy - Process for openers). This method of working and going over the opener lends itself to allow students to construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others, which is mathematical practice 3.
Learning Target: After completion of the opener, I will address the day’s learning targets to the students. In today’s lesson, the intended target is, “I can apply surface area and volume to solve problems.” Students will jot the learning target down in their agendas (our version of a student planner, there is a place to write the learning target for every day).
Notes: This portion of the lesson will include a review of the methods for finding surface area and volume of three dimensional figures. When reviewing volume, I am going to continue to stress that students need to find the area of the base and multiply by the height – volume is simply a bunch of bases stacked on top of one another. For surface area, I will reiterate that students are finding the area of each of the surfaces of the figure – and adding together – because the net of the figure is really just a composite figure. I will also stress the importance of precision – students must be cognizant of what they are solving and label their answers with appropriate units, which is an implementation of mathematical practice 6, being precise.
Table Challenge (Smart PDF ): Students will work with their homogeneous table groups to solve sample test questions on surface area and volume. For this challenge, I am going to draw cards to determine which table will work out which problem. In order to keep all tables on task throughout all problems, I do not reward correct tables until the end of the activity. Though it is not a practice I enjoy, part of student success on a state exam is being able to break down questions in an effort to figure out exactly what is being asked. It is important that students are fluent with solving questions that are worded and presented like those on the state exam so that the only thing on their minds during the exam is the content – not the presentation of the content. As with all table challenges, students will be asked to persevere with problems and work them out together, which is mathematical practice 1. I am more than willing to help students, but they have to really try first! Additionally, the types of problems I have chosen require that students reason abstractly and quantitatively (mathematical practice 2), making sense of words by writing equations or drawing figures. Also, the problems they are solving model real world applications of the topics, which is mathematical practice 4.