On Lesson Plans:

 

Lesson Plan Example: Excerpt from STAI 2-Day Unit

 

The lesson plan attached below - with additional attachments for some of the materials used -  is an excerpt from the STAI six-day plan we were required to construct at the end of our first fall semester. This particular part of the six-day plan is a two-day lesson in which students are asked to analyze a business decision using linear systems. After a short discussion regarding the relative pros and cons of solving a linear system by graphing and substitution methods, students - now in groups - are presented with a scenario involving the purchase of cellphone plans for different employees in an office setting. The lesson is structured so that it is relatively easy to develop linear models for each cellphone plan and construct a linear system that can be used to analyze them in respect to the different phone usage needs of various employees. The first day of the lesson plan is intended to be spent building a linear system and the second day is intended to be spent deciding which plan is best for each employee.

 

I found the original data for the lesson plan in a math resource book that was left by a previous teacher. The scenario seemed to provide a easy enough bridge between the content we have been talking about in class and an object of much value to the average high school- age student: a cellphone. In practice, the office decision scenario coupled with what turned out to be a vastly obsolete pricing system seemed to eclipse any naturally transferred relevance to a situation that happened to involve cellular phones. To adjust to this, I had students bring in information about current cellphone plan options, and developed an ad hoc project in which students adapted plan options within a company or between companies to the linear system analysis made explicit in the original office scenario. This decision resulted in a much clearer sense that there was a realistic connection between the linear systems analysis and those disastrous little machines that my students imagined were so cleverly hidden from view. Furthermore, it was interesting (at least to me) to try and account for how the bells and whistles of today’s cellphone plans alter the linear quality of your monthly bill (e.g. text messaging, nights and weekends, anytime minutes, internet, etc.). I was very impressed with some of the conclusions my students were able to draw regarding their own consumer choices - and often regret not returning to the activity in my second year teaching Algebra 2.