This lesson is meant to work as both an introduction to a brand new topic and a quick assessment of

prior knowledge. The goal of this lesson is to use a game to guide kids through developing the laws of
exponents by applying their knowledge of division and multiplication.

To begin the lesson I projected a list of the students names onto the board and gave the students a
whiteboard and marker. I told the student that there had been a math plague outbreak and we were all
infected. When they got an answer right they are so overcome with excitement about math that they
had to come up to the board and bite one of their classmates by putting an x under their name. No
student may be bitten more than once per round unless there are no other choices. Once a student had
been bitten 3 times they become a Math Zombie! At this point they can no longer win the game but
they can still play and try to turn others into math zombies.
For the first question I asked the students to write out on their board what 33 means. Not what the
answer is, I want to know what it means. I gave no further instruction and allowed the students to
think on what I wanted for 30 seconds. After time was up all the students lifted their board and revealed
their answers. At this point you need a sharp eye to watch for cheating as you announce the correct
answer and direct students to the board to put an x under someone's name.
A few students made the connection I was asking for and wrote 3*3*3 on their boards. If no student
gets it correct I would announce the answer and try another one, after seeing the answer at least one
student would make the connection the second time.

The second question will be what does x5 mean. Since the students have already seen what 33 means
they should be able to make the jump to the next scaffold where x5 means x*x*x*x*x. Once all of the
students have chosen someone to bite they are ready to begin exploring the laws of exponents as they
apply to monomials.

We will begin by asking what a3 * a2 means and the work up to simplifying it. There will be a lot of
complaining that they dont know how to do this and the students may need to be encouraged that you
believe in them and to give it a try. Some students will be able to see that this becomes a5 . Have the
students who answered correctly explain what they did and then try another similar question. I offered
no guidance to the students unless no one had figured out what to do after the second question. Once
most students were getting a couple scores we would take a moment to discuss what the rule was, only
then would I explicitly state the rule.

We worked through multiplying monomials, dividing monomials which lead to a great discussion on
what x0 means and whether or not you can have negative exponents, and monomials raised to a power.
We even made it to a few challenge problems towards the end and all students were attempting to
complete them as they fought to try and win the game.

I had to carefully monitor the pace of the game to keep the scores competitive. We ended up playing
through twice during the course of the lesson and all students were engaged the entire time. They asked
several times throughout the week if we could play it again. This lesson gave me a snapshot of each
students prior knowledge of exponent laws and allowed me to give students who were lacking prior
knowledge something to begin building connections with in the following lessons on Exponent laws.