Basic Productivity Tools (BPT) Lesson Idea

Lesson Title Estimating the Mass Of The Sun.

Content Area AP Statistics

Content Standards Representing a Quantitative Variable with Graphs

Technology Standards Empowered Learner
- 1.1.c Students use technology to seek feedback that informs and
improves their practice and to demonstrate their learning in a
variety of ways.
Digital Citizen
- 1.2a Students cultivate and manage their digital identity and
reputation and are aware of the permanence of their actions in the
digital world.
- 1.2b Students engage in positive, safe, legal and ethical behavior
when using technology, including social interactions online or when
using networked devices.
- 1.2c Students demonstrate an understanding of and respect for the
rights and obligations of using and sharing intellectual property.
- 1.2d Students manage their personal data to maintain digital privacy
and security and are aware of data-collection technology used to
track their navigation online.

Integrated Technology Google (Spreadsheet)

Reference or What Is Google Sheets and How Is It Used? (techtarget.com)
Supporting Resources This Url supported my idea in creating this lesson by listing out the
capabilities of Google Sheets (free) vs Excel (costs money). Google Sheets
has all of the necessary functions/capabilities in order for my students to do
this lesson. As a teacher it is better to take the cheaper option when it can do
perform the same capabilities as the pricy option required for the task.

Bloom’s Taxonomy Remember

Levels
Understand

Apply

Analyze

Evaluate (support the reasoning developed from the data collected by doing
some google search)

Create (formulate an equation that captures line of best fit, we will look at
them the next day in class)

Integration Level Level 2: Exploration

Level 3: Infusion

Level 4b: Integration (Routine)

Universal Design Google Spreadsheets satisfies most or all of the UDL principles since
Rationale students will can create multiple representations of data through graphs
 (lines, histograms, and box plots), tables, and formulas which satisfies
multiple means of expression and action on the UDL wheel. Google
Spreadsheets also give students different options to pick from when selecting
symbols such as the font, size, super/sub scripts, and color which satisfies
the multiple means of representation on the UDL wheel.
Lesson Idea For this lesson, the students are fully responsible for their learning and
advancement in thinking and making connections amongst ideas. Really this
lesson would be idea for a 90 minute class period. The students will spend a
vast majority of the class period ideally about an hour working on this task
while I facilitate and ask each group questions to point them in the right
direction. Right at the beginning of the class my students are given Kepler’s
Third Law formula and what each piece of the formula is related to. From
there, we will hold a brief discussion maybe about 10 minutes, allowing my
students time to unpack the information given to them, any additional
information needed, etc. Afterwards, my students will be divided up into
groups to spend the rest of class time doing the task. They must look up
resources online about finding the (period)2 and the (Semi-Major Axis)3 , which
will allow them to generate a table of values, and create a graph related to it.

This lesson is really divided into two parts, day one would be the students
actually doing the task while part 2 (the next day), would be us discussing as
a class what the mass of the sun would be. Each group must present their
findings through whatever medium. Ideally the key criteria is that students
must provide their graphs, the data, and whatever sources they used to find
the information. If they required any additional information for their findings,
then they must also include it and explain how that additional piece of
information led them to find the mass of the sun. We will conclude this lesson
with me discussing the actual mass of the sun is. I will do a quick google
search on what the mass of the sun is and then relate it to each student’s
work, like how off were the students and what were the possible sources. I
might even have my students jump in the discussion to see what the possible
sources for human error could have been, if any. This lesson will actually
introduce students to confidence intervals since through my studies of Stats,
given the wide range of class data from what each group gathered for the
mass of the sun, it would allow us to take the mean, and then form a
confidence interval.
Students are assessed through two parts, Data upload and graph, and their
presentation. For this task I do not care about accuracy, but I do care about if
there is a major inconsistency with the students data and graph. For instance,
if the student’s line graph is not linear, then something is off. The final product
will allow me to access student’s level of thinking based off their performance
during the data gathering and formulating stage, and the actual presentation.
Actually depending on the success of this lesson/task, will determine whether
or not I should implement this sort of task again in the future. My students will
receive feedback through their peers and during our class discussion. For
instance, we may ask the presenters to fully elaborate on what they are
saying so that way they can differentiate their presentation so everybody can
understand the process of how they got their solution, the symbols and
language used, and what their graph tells them. Students will receive
feedback through justification of the relationship between one step to another
and why it is valid (not necessarily mathematically because this problem
extends beyond mathematics, so in general they are defending their solution).
Design Reflection This lesson can fully enhance student learning since they are not just learning
directly from me but also from their peers. Being forced to elaborate and
reason on your ideas can promote your thinking, since you are being forced
to make connections. Even if a student may not be able to fully elaborate or
reason about their work, then hearing the same or different idea from
someone’s else perspective can help you build connections. The way in
which I could see myself extending this lesson would be to give away less
information that is usually needed to speed up the process. A formula is
usually created through reasonings of what additional information do we need
to calculate the area of the square. Thus, taking away less information will
shift my students into thinking more like mathematicians can help enrich our
discussion at the end of the lesson. Instead of google spreadsheet, students
could use a graphing calculator instead, but that costs money and if they are
already on the internet using google spreadsheets, might as well allow them
to roam the internet.