Teaching Puzzle Prompt #1

Iris Kuo
Purpose: A group of middle school students are starting to learn about percentages. The goal is to
craft a short lesson that utilizes Frieres theories of problem-posing education in order to
maximize the students learning.
Context: Middle school students are typically 6th-8th graders and are usually around 11 to 14
years old. However, these particular students are gifted 4th graders who are part of the
accelerated program. They have skipped three years of mathematics and are around 9 years old.
Their performance in other skills, such as reading and writing, is the same as other 4th graders
their age. Because students in the accelerated program generally come from families that value
academics, they have had a lot of outside practice with math and are proficient in simple
arithmetic. However, it is because of this that they arent often exposed to other methods of
learning math.
Materials Needed: Lego blocks
Method: Since the students are proficient in calculations but dont get much practice in real
world applications, this session will start with what they are familiar with and slowly work
towards the practical reasoning behind what they are learning. First of all, percentages go hand in
hand with fractions and division/multiplication, so a lesson that requires the students to draw
from this knowledge and apply it to the new concept of percentages would be efficient. I also
believe that hands-on activities are effective, especially if they provide visual feedback of the
concepts. Taking all of this into consideration, I will use Lego blocks as an illustrative tools and
integrate a narrative into the lesson. For instance, we can imagine scenarios that involve dividing
up snacks among friends so that everyone has an equal share, which requires implicit knowledge
of fractions and percentages. This will allow the students to problem-solve instead of simply
calculate. Since its easiest to introduce percentages out of 100 first, I will start with examples of
that and then diverge to more advanced numbers if time allows it.
Results: