Lesson Portfolio Entry: Utilizing Challenging Mathematics

Task What is the main activity that students will be working on in this lesson?
Students will analyze a situation: a cosmic stone has started polluting humanity with a deadly contagious virus. Students must use knowledge of multiplication (repeated) to find the general formula for exponential functions. Students will be asked to related certain equations back to the context of the outbreak in order to discuss transformations. Students will need to develop their own mathematical structures since only the context is provided. They will need to decide how to effectively answer the question and the skills required to do so.

Instructional Support What tools or resources will students have to use in their work that will give them entry to, and help them reason through, the activity?
Students will only be provided with the context on the worksheet, then: 1. Students will have graph paper 2. Students will pencils to draw connections 3. I will provide the suggestion to try one of these contexts: graph, diagram, table, chart, etc. Then, students are on their own apart from the launch and my questioning strategies for the lesson.

Learning Goals (Residue) What understandings will students take away from this activity?
1. 2. 3. Students will describe the growth rate of an exponential function. Students will develop an exponential formula for tabular/situational data Students will describe transformations of exponential growth functions using the contexts. Students will discuss how altering the situation changes the equations.

What questions might you ask students that will support their exploration of the activity and bridge between what they did and what you want them to learn (the two green boxes)?
1. To be clear on what students actually did, begin by asking a set of assessing questions such as: What did you do? How did you get that? What does this mean? Once you have a clearer sense of what the student understands, move on to appropriate set of questions below. What is happening between each successive day? How quantities are related in the context? What can the situation tell us about the formula? How does the number of times the factor appears relate to the day number? How do the number of infections on your drawing relate to the number of the previous day? Why is the pattern important for establishing the relationship? What is the (in)dependent variable? What value is changing and what is that value affecting as it increases (or decreases)?

4.

What are the various ways that students might complete the activity?
1. 2. 3. 4. Students can draw a picture of the outbreak pattern Students can create a table and break down the factors Students can rewrite each result as repeated multiplication Students can identify the multiple between each term and then create the equation

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Evidence What will students say, do, produce, etc. that will provide evidence of their understandings?

Connections: repeated multiplication, common ratio between entries, data/graphing/diagram. All can be visual, verbal, tabular, or algebraic in nature. Students will describe how each constant/coefficient changes the context Students will verbalize connections between the base varying and the use of a variable in the exponent.