Basic Productivity Tools (BPT)

Lesson Idea Name: Exploring Probability

Content Area: Geometry
Grade Level(s): 10th
Content Standard Addressed: MGSE9-12.S.CP.2 Understand that if two events A and B are independent, the
probability of A and B occurring together is the product of their probabilities, and that if the probability of two
events A and B occurring together is the product of their probabilities, the two events are independent.

Technology Standard Addressed: 1.5.b Students collect data or identify relevant data sets, use digital tools to
analyze them, and represent data in various ways to facilitate problem-solving and decision-making.

Selected Technology Tool: Excel

URL(s) to support the lesson (if applicable): This tutorial is used to instruct students on how to create two
virtual dice in Excel.

Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy Level(s):

☐ Remembering ☐ Understanding ☒ Applying ☒ Analyzing ☒ Evaluating ☐ Creating

Levels of Technology Integration:

☐ Infusion Level: Students may work at a higher Bloom’s Level, but they do not have any “Voice or Choice”
during the activity and most of the decisions are made by the teacher.

☒ Integration Level: We would like to see ALL lessons/activities reach this level. The project is student-
driven. Students have “Voice and Choice” in the activities, selecting the topic of study and determining the
technology tool to demonstrate mastery of the standard. The teacher becomes more of a facilitator.

☐ Expansion Level: The projects created are shared outside of the classroom, publishing student work and
promoting authorship. This could be reached by showcasing the project on the school’s morning
newscast, posting the project to the classroom blog, or publishing via an outside source.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL):

Using Excel will give students a chance to utilize the accessibility function available in all Microsoft Office
software as well as allow students to experiment with responding to prompts with text, video, or images and
including those files in the assignment. Students can make choices of how to format the information they
produce and make guesses and predictions about the outcome of the experiment. Directing students how
they can create virtual simulations like rolling dice in Excel can open up ideas for future use of this BPT.
Allowing students to make choices and experiment with probability will increase engagement and
action/expression according to the UDL framework.

Lesson idea implementation:

Students will be given this lesson after being introduced to the topic of probability and given definitions for
terms like independent and dependent. They should know how to calculate the probability of independent
events in order to complete this assignment. Students can work alone or in small groups to complete the
directions and prompts in the included Excel file and a whole class discussion can compare results and ideas
that students have based on the work they’ve done in Excel. I estimate the prompts in Excel file will take
about 1 hour for students to compete, which leaves time in a block schedule to include discussion and sharing
SBooker, 2022
 Basic Productivity Tools (BPT)
of results, this lesson may need to be broken into two parts for shorter class periods. The teacher’s role in this
lesson will be to guide students who need help and moderate the discussion afterwards, but let students be
the main facilitators. The teacher will also summarize the main points the students brought up at the end of
the lesson.

Reflective Practice:
I feel that the activity I created will give students a chance to experiment with both Excel and probability to
learn more about both. Creating virtual dice in Excel may give them other ideas on how to use the software in
the future. Excel could also be used to generate random data for creating two way tables later on in the
probability unit, or forms could be used to gather data from surveys and be imported into Excel for another
possible project.

SBooker, 2022