Lesson Plan for Implementing

NETSSTemplate I
(More Directed Learning Activities)
Template with guiding questions
Teacher(s)
Name
Megan Smith Taylor
Position

Teacher

School/District

Pope High School/Cobb County

E-mail

Megantaylor719@gmail.com

Phone

404-433-0960

Grade Level(s)

9th

Content Area

Coordinate Algebra

Time line

2 days

Standards (What do you want students to know and be able to do? What knowledge, skills, and strategies do you
expect students to gain? Are there connections to other curriculum areas and subject area benchmarks? ) Please
put a summary of the standards you will be addressing rather than abbreviations and numbers that indicate which
standards were addressed.
Teachers often hear the common student question, When am I ever going to use this in real life?. I wanted to
take what could be just another required standard for students, and turn an assignment into using real data to
think about the value of cars over time. This assignment covered exponential functions and how they model real
life situations. I wanted to connect the math numerically, algebraically, graphically, and analytically so students
could have a solid basis on exponential functions. The technology used allowed students to discover actual car
data on their own and publish their responses on a Weebly site.

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Content Standards:

Interpretfunctionsthatariseinapplicationsintermsofthecontext
MCC912.F.IF.4
Forafunctionthatmodelsarelationshipbetweentwoquantities,interpretkeyfeaturesof
graphsandtablesintermsofthequantities,andsketchgraphsshowingkeyfeaturesgivena
verbaldescriptionoftherelationship.
MCC912.F.IF.5
Relatethedomainofafunctiontoitsgraphand,whereapplicable,tothequantitative
relationshipitdescribes.
MCC912.F.IF.7
Graphfunctionsexpressedsymbolicallyandshowkeyfeaturesofthegraph,byhandin
simplecasesandusingtechnologyformorecomplicatedcase
MCC912.F.LE.2
Constructlinearandexponentialfunctions,includingarithmeticandgeometricsequences,
givenagraph,adescriptionofarelationship,ortwoinputoutputpairs

NETS*S Standards:
1.Creativity and innovation
Students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products
and processes using technology.
a. Apply existing knowledge to generate new ideas, products, or processes
b. Create original works as a means of personal or group expression
c. Use models and simulations to explore complex systems and issues
3. Research and information fluency
Students apply digital tools to gather, evaluate, and use information.
b. Locate, organize, analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and ethically use information from a variety
of
sources and media
c. Evaluate and select information sources and digital tools based on the appropriateness to
specific tasks
d. Process data and report results

5. Digital citizenship
Students understand human, cultural, and societal issues related to technology and practice
legal and ethical behavior.
a. Advocate and practice safe, legal, and responsible use of information and technology

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Overview (a short summary of the lesson or unit including assignment or expected or possible products)
Unit 3 in CCGPS Coordinate Algebra involves students learning about exponential functions. In order to make this
project as real life as possible, my students were expected to do an assignment on modeling the value of cars
and how they depreciate over time. Students used Edmunds.com to select any make, model, or year car they
wanted to find out its price brand new and find its depreciation rate over the first five years (the average American
gets a new car every five years). They then created an exponential equation, found a suitable picture from Flickr
to represent their car, used Desmos.com (an online graphing calculator) to graph their function, and posted all of
their findings on exponentialcars.weebly.com. Students printed their graphs and brought them into school the next
day. Students were split into groups and the characteristics of each students graph and function were discussed
in context.

Essential Questions (What essential question or learning are you addressing? What would students care or
want to know about the topic? What are some questions to get students thinking about the topic or generate
interest about the topic? Additionally, what questions can you ask students to help them focus on important
aspects of the topic? (Guiding questions) What background or prior knowledge will you expect students to bring
to this topic and build on?) Remember, essential questions are meant to guide the lesson by provoking inquiry.
They should not be answered with a simple yes or no and should have many acceptable answers.
My essential question is, Using exponential models, how are cars values affected over time, keeping in mind
their asymptotic behavior and x and y intercepts? Because students are just reaching the driving age, the
application of the math was engaging to them.
Several questions I asked during the day the assignment was given:
-What kind of car are you interested in?
-Do you think it is wise to buy a used or new car?
-Do cars depreciate or appreciate over time?
-Even though all exponential functions have domains of all real numbers, how does the domain of this car
problem compare?
The day after the assignment, students were grouped to talk about their findings. For some groups, I helped them
with guiding questions, such as:
-Why are your graphs and equations all different?
-What does the horizontal asymptote of y=0 mean for this problem?
-Which types of cars depreciate the fastest in the first five years?
-Which kind of cars had the least depreciation? Why do you think this is?
For background information, my students had spent the previous week learned about general exponential
functions and how the characteristics of functions apply. They had a great understanding of these characteristics,
so they were finally ready to apply them to real world situations.

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Assessment (What will students do or produce to illustrate their learning? What can students do to generate new
knowledge? How will you assess how students are progressing (formative assessment)? How will you assess
what they produce or do? How will you differentiate products?) You must attach copies of your assessment and/or
rubrics. Include these in your presentation as well.
Students are required submit their unique exponential equation, picture, depreciation rate, and response on
Weebly. By splitting into groups the next day, they compared graphs and showed that what they had learned
through their group discussions. This assignment was a quiz grade. I differentiated the next day since their groups
were based on the math skill level.
Resources (How does technology support student learning? What digital tools, and resourcesonline student
tools, research sites, student handouts, tools, tutorials, templates, assessment rubrics, etchelp elucidate or
explain the content or allow students to interact with the content? What previous technology skills should students
have to complete this project?)
Technology was used in this lesson to support student learning in a variety of ways. First, students used the
website Edmunds.com to discover themselves the facts on any car of their choice. Many told me they used this
website to do the required research on price and depreciation but then also found the other information on this
site interesting such as gas mileage, special features, and different models. Students also really were engaged in
this site because they were able to pick the car they wanted; some chose their dream car, while others chose cars
they had in the family.
The next way technology supported student learning was by connecting their equation they created (based off the
information found on Edmounds.com to the graphical representation of the value of the car using Desmos.com.
Student had to think about the appropriate x and y bounds in context of this problem.
Students also used Flickr.com to find a picture of their specific car.
Students then posted all of this information on a Weebly site that I created, exponentialcars.weebly.com. This
allowed them to gather their thoughts and explain their reasoning for their choice of car and whether they would
buy and new or used car in the future based off their findings of car depreciation.
Students needed prior experience of using Desmos.com in order to complete the graphing part of this project.
Although it is a very user friendly site, graphing calculators and their functions are new to most of the freshmen
students. We had used this useful website a handful of times in class before this assignment, so they had a basic
understanding of how to operate the site.
Each student was given a rubric with clear expectations of what needed to be covered and completed. This
assignment counted as a quiz graded, so the students appreciated the set of expectations to closely follow. There
was also a check list listed on the website so students could make sure they were completing everything
necessary,

Instructional Plan
Preparation (What student needs, interests, and prior learning provide a foundation for this lesson? How can
you find out if students have this foundation? What difficulties might students have?)

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We had spent about a week in class learning about general exponential functions (not yet in context problems)
prior to this assignment. Students first needed to have a basic understanding of asymptotes, intercepts, and
domain/range before analyzing the functions and graphs that represented exponential problems in the real world.
Most of my students are freshmen who range in age of 14-15. I constantly hear conversations from my students
about them getting their learners permit as their fifteenth birthday approaches, yet very few of them have the
financial responsibility of owning a car quite at this time. I thought this assignment would instantly engage them
because of their age and stage of life, but it would also give them great opportunities to learn that it might not be
the wisest idea to buy new and/or expensive cars.

Management Describe the classroom management strategies will you use to manage your students and the use
of digital tools and resources. How and where will your students work? (Small groups, whole group, individuals,
classroom, lab, etc.) What strategies will you use to achieve equitable access to the Internet while completing this
lesson? Describe what technical issues might arise during the Internet lesson and explain how you will resolve or
trouble-shoot them? Please note: Trouble-shooting should occur prior to implementing the lesson as well as
throughout the process. Be sure to indicate how you prepared for problems and work through the issues that
occurred as you implemented and even after the lesson was completed.
Because all of this information would be entered online on a public website, I had the students enter only their first
name and last initial when submitting their responses.
Also, I assigned this assignment on a Wednesday since we have early release on Wednesday afternoons. If
students are waiting to ride the bus, it allows the students with limited internet access at home to use the
computers in the Media Center. Also, the Media Center is open before school begins, so students could do it the
next morning before school. I had several students ask if they could do this project entirely on their phone, which
is perfectly acceptable.
Students did the assignment on their own time for homework but we did a lot of prep work in the classroom the
day before so that students would have a base understanding of what they were doing and we analyzed graphs in
the conclusion the following day. Students were in groups the following day based on skill level and everyone had
their printed graph. I wanted the students who excelled at math grouped together so they could have more in
depth discussions on what the asymptotes, interval of decreasing, and intercepts meant in context of their car.
For the lower level students, I frequently prompted them with discussion questions to make sure they were
headed in the right direction and discussing the appropriate related math. If anyone had a unique graph or
equation, I used the Smart Board to pull up his or her Weebly responses to further investigate the rate of
depreciation and starting price value.
Unexpectantly, I had several students who had error messages when posting to Weebly and could not get their
responses to show online. These students were intelligent to figure out to email me their responses instead, which
I accepted for full credit.

Instructional Strategies and Learning Activities Describe the research-based instructional strategies you will
use with this lesson. How will your learning environment support these activities? What is your role? What are the
students' roles in the lesson? How can you ensure higher order thinking at the analysis, evaluation, or
creativity levels of Blooms Taxonomy? How can the technology support your teaching? What authentic,
relevant, and meaningful learning activities and tasks will your students complete? How will they build knowledge
and skills? How will students use digital tools and resources to communicate and collaborate with each other
and others? How will you facilitate the collaboration?
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I tried to incorporate many Indicators of Engaged Learning. The strongest ones were: standards based,
authentic/meaningful, and student directed.
The students were take control on this assignment since they are the ones choosing the car and leading the
discussions the next day. I helped facilitate discussions to some groups. I really, really pressed hard on the group
discussion because there was a TON to analyze and compare when looking at group graphs and equations. Not
only was it great mathematical discussion, but there was also great conversations about life tasks, like buying a
new vs. old car and which kinds of cars are most likely to lose a lot of their value within the first several years.
They learned a web tool where they can research cars in the future when they are ready to make that kind of
purchase. I feel a lot of the levels of Blooms Taxonomy were represented (evaluating, analyzing, understanding)
in this assignment even though it was not a huge drawn out project the students had to complete.

Differentiation (How will you differentiate content and process to accommodate various learning styles and
abilities? How will you help students learn independently and with others? How will you provide extensions and
opportunities for enrichment? What assistive technologies will you need to provide?)
In class, we looked up different cars on the Smart Board together on Edmunds.com. Students had to
independently, submit their own responses that night. The next day, they came together and were put into groups
based on skill level where they could collaborate their ideas and their findings. They analyzed each others graphs
and what they meant. Some students actually asked if they could do a response on more than one car since they
found the concept interesting. The students LOVED talking about they cars they chose the following day, which
provided great discussion and further enrichment. A couple of students really disliked using the online calculator,
Desmos.com. These were typically the students that owned their own graphing calculator and know how fantastic
this handheld tool is, so I allowed them to use it. Because this project was given on our early release day,
students without internet access at home could use the Media Center computers while waiting for the bus.

Reflection (Will there be a closing event? Will students be asked to reflect upon their work? Will students be
asked to provide feedback on the assignment itself? What will be your process for answering the following
questions?
Did students find the lesson meaningful and worth completing?
In what ways was this lesson effective?
What went well and why?
What did not go well and why?
How would you teach this lesson differently?)

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The closing activity was the group work (discussed above) where students were divided based on skill level and
asked to analyze their graphs. It was great that no two students had the same car, equation, and graph; this way
they could constantly analyze different graphs but could still see the similarities between them.
To see if the students would find the lesson meaningful and effective, I looked for two things The first was to listen
to their discussions when they were in group work and hear how in depth (or lost) they were. The second was to
give them their homework the following night which included problems that were solely in context; if this
assignment was effective, they would be able to carry their learned knowledge to the following homework
assignment.
As mentioned earlier, students were extremely engaged when they realized they got to choose their own car,
make, and model. This gave them motivation to complete the math part of the assignment and also promoted
some friendly competition to see who had the most expensive car, as well as whose lost the most value in the first
five years. Based off their discussion and how many students completed their assignment (because the amount of
students that usually complete their homework is not a great percentage) I think this assignment was definitely a
success.
The one part that I think did not fit fluidly in the assignment was using Flicker to get a picture of the car, but this
was not a problem I foresaw until after it was over. I initially wanted students to use Flickr because I was afraid if
they found a picture online (such as on Google Images), I might not be able to access the picture on my school
computer if the image was from a blog or other restricted website. I knew that Flickr was not restricted from our
schools internet since we had used it before it class, and it also follows copyright laws. Another flaw is that when
students posted the links in their responses on Weebly and pressed submit, hyperlink was not an option. This
caused for extremely long URL web addresses that had to be copy and pasted in a web browser for others and
me to view.
If I were to do this assignment differently next year, I would either take the Flickr aspect away from the
requirements or I would show them how to use the helpful site Tiny URL. Also, I was afraid to do too much since
this was my first time, but students could definitely choose more than one car next time and compare the two
different equations and graphs. I would also make sure the students wrote more in their response to see read
their thought process. Finally, I would want more collaboration during the assignment instead of just in groups the
next day.
Closure: Anything else you would like to reflect upon regarding lessons learned and/or your experience with
implementing this lesson. What advice would you give others if they were to implement the lesson? Please
provide a quality reflection on your experience with this lesson and its implementation.
Now that I have completed my first online lesson project, I have more confidence that I can do another one.
Students for the next assignment would already be familiar with how to use Weebly and Desmos.com, yet I could
easily change the context of the assignment to learn a new standard while using recognizable tools. This might
produce better results since students could focus less on how to use the tool and instead focus more on the
content. The advice I would give to other teachers wanting to implement this lesson is to have students complete
the requirements on more than one car.

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