Ed143aw Math Field Teaching 2023

2022-23 CalTeach ED143AW/ED148/ED143BW
Math Field Teaching Plan and Reflective Analysis

INSTRUCTION
The Math Field Teaching Plan and Reflective Analysis has two strands: a research strand (green boxes)
and a lesson planning strand (blue boxes). Each strand has its own timeline and due dates. Please refer to
the Workflow Table for an overview.
● Part I research writing is due Week 3; lesson design is due 3 weeks before your lesson is taught.
● Part II research writing is due Week 4; lesson design is due 2 weeks before your lesson is taught,
along with revisions to Part I
● Part III (the completed and revised lesson plan) is due 1 week before your lesson is taught to
your mentor teacher and supervisor in addition to your instructor.
● Part IV is due 1 week after you teach the lesson, along with any final revision to the lesson plan.
● Appendix: Workflow Table- an aide for making sense of due dates
Notes in gray boxes are advice on writing the lesson plan.

Type your responses in white boxes
Your plan is designed to be completed in sections and continually revised as you move through each section.
Please use the following color code when you make revisions!
Strikethrough- Something that has been deleted
Blue - Changed that were made as part of the rough draft in response to Master Teacher or peer feedback
(before teaching the lesson).
Green - Added spontaneously while teaching the lesson (After the lesson).
Red - Did not do while teaching the lesson (After the lesson, as part of revision/reflection).
Pink - Would do differently next time if I were to do this lesson again (After the lesson).
Name Dian Tang Partner Erin Kim

Mentor Teacher Mrs. Kara Wells School Northwood High School
Date 2/21/2023 and 2/23/2023 Course Math I
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Lesson template adapted from H.Kang
Part I: Information about the Lesson

RESEARCH WRITING due Week 3
LESSON DESIGN due 3 weeks prior to instruction
RESEARCH WRITING - Connecting Learning with Students - DUE Week 3
Paragraph 1 (between 150 and 250 words):

● What made learning interesting, relevant, and engagain and matter to you when you were a student?
What made it less interesting, relevant, and engaging?
● Why do you think that is? What theories from ED55 could explain this?

● What do we need to know about our students to ensure that our focal phenomenon matters, is
meaningful, relevant to them.
● Consider Moll’s Funds of Knowledge from ED55 and complete and reference one additional
reading (per student) on student funds of knowledge. Consider values, identities, cultures, and
student background. How can you find these things out about your students and community?
Paragraph 3/4 (between 200 and 350 words):

● What everyday knowledge and ways of thinking and knowing (need to unpack this), about this
phenomenon, concept, idea, do you expect students will be able to bring with them to this lesson?
● What prior knowledge should students already have about this idea or concept?
● How do you know, or could find out, what students already know and do not know. What could be
one approach that you could use to find out what students would accommodate as wide a range of
thinking and knowing as you can?
As a student, learning was interesting and relevant when the lesson had connections to real-life situations, and
these connections were also made through fun, hands-on activities. In middle school, when we were learning
about slope with real-life situations such as two students wanting to improve their SAT scores and one student
having a lower original score but a higher score growth rate each week, while another student having a higher
original score but lower score growth rate each week. The line intersect gives us the time when these two
students catch up with each other's scores. In contrast, we felt math learning could have been more is less
exciting and relevant when we learned it in a traditional lecture-style form, where teachers spoke most of the
time and only presented definitions and procedures. We were trained to memorize steps to solve certain
problems instead of learning to understand the steps behind the problems. In Edu 55, one of the learning
theories we have learned is content integration, a method of teaching where teachers apply information and
examples from different cultures to cover a concept. In addition, the idea of metacognition relates to students
“thinking about one’s own thinking” (Darling-Hammond, et.al). When students are learning a new concept in
math in an engaging lesson, teachers make sure that the hands-on activity also makes connections to their
prior knowledge. This allows students to think about how their ideas about this new concept connect to other
thoughts, especially information they understand very well. In phenomenon-based learning, the teacher
should have common-known situations, and life constructs metacognitive knowledge for each student, which
comes from students' life experiences and plays a crucial role in the mathematics learning process.
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To know that our focal phenomenon matters, I need to know my students' values and interests, so I can apply
these topics to my lessons in order for the lesson to feel engaging and relevant. To get to know my students
and for students to get to know each other, I can have icebreakers at the beginning of my class. The paper
"Funds of Knowledge" by Luis C. Moll explains that "our analysis of funds of knowledge represents a
positive (and, we argue, realistic) view of households as containing ample cultural and cognitive resources
with great potential utility for classroom instruction" (Moll et al., 1992). The household students grow up in
dramatically impacts how they think and perform at school. It is helpful for teachers to learn about their
students' backgrounds to generate a culturally equal learning environment. Social justice in mathematics
involves "eliminating deficit views of mathematics learning," meaning that the factors such as households'
income, culture, and race should not be used to rank students' skills in math (NCSM and TODOS, 1). Math
can be taught with equity with activities that allow all students to participate, and the lessons should be
connected with students' common-known real-world events.
This lesson analyzes the number of people caught with COVID-19 in a county when the virus started to
spread rapidly during the pandemic's beginning (exponential growth). On Day 2 of the lesson, I plan to teach
when people started to get vaccinated, and each day, the spread of the virus began to slow down (exponential
decay). Students are all experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic, so connecting this current event to the number
of cases (a factor many people are curious about since they want to see when certain rules, such as masking
and social distancing, are not required) to exponential graphs will be relevant. Students need prior knowledge
of plotting points on a rectangular coordinate system graph, basic properties of exponents, recognizing a
pattern of repeated multiplication, creating exponential patterns, and function notation. Students'
performances in group discussion and collaboration by working on the worksheet, which requires students to
do both calculations, create a data table, and draw a graph by using the data on a rectangular coordinate
system, can be a method to discover if students know how to graph points and know how to write equations
using proper function notation, which are necessary skills for learning exponential functions. Asking
intriguing questions at the beginning of the lesson will also allow students to think about how this virus can
spread by connecting to their existing math knowledge.
Students might be curious about what exactly allows their bodies to grow and move to perform everyday
tasks. Through this lesson, students will discover that the hundreds of millions of cells that make up our body
undergo cell division and old cells undergo cell decay, and all of this is the reason why our body functions the
way it does. Day One of the lesson analyzes the growth of cells in our body through a cell division known as
“mitosis”, and this relates to an exponential growth function. One of the most important cells that carries
oxygen from our lungs to our entire body and provides nutrients known as “red blood cells” dies and
replenishes in a cycle. More specifically, the half-life, the time required for a cell to reduce to half of its initial
size, is approximately 30 days, and this relates to an exponential decay function. Students' performances in
group discussion and collaboration by working on the worksheet, which requires students to do both
calculations, create a data table, and draw a graph by using the data on a rectangular coordinate system, can
be a method to check if students know how to graph points and know how to write equations using proper
function notation (prior knowledge students should have from learning linear equations), which are necessary
skills for learning exponential functions. In the beginning of the lesson, I want to start off with intriguing
questions related to the phenomena such as “How are we able to do tasks like walking and sitting in the
classroom to learn? To be specific, what is our body made up of (think about your biology class) that allows
us to do the tasks I have just mentioned?”
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TEACHING CONTEXT - DUE 21 Days Before Teach
Describe the lesson topic in which your lesson fits (e.g. functions, algebra, number & quantity), and the
lesson topic (e.g. quadratics, systems of equations)
Lesson: Math I Chapter 8

Topic: Exponential Functions
Type of Class:Math I (mainly Algebra I content)
Choose the appropriate descriptors from the lists or substitute your own descriptions.
● Grade level(s): (9, 10, 11,12)

● Type of school: (Urban or Suburban)
● Tracking level: (Untracked, Lower track, College bound, or Inclusion)
ABSTRACT (~50-100 words per question) - DUE 21 Days Before Teach
What is the observable event/phenomenon or real world context that students will be exploring?
Students will analyze the spread of COVID-19 in a county and find a formula to describe the correlation
between number of cases with a time, t. Students will discover that this situation can be expressed as an
exponentially increasing function, y=2^t, which relates to its spread when we first had to go into lockdown.
Also, students will learn exponentially decreasing (decay) functions. Since people are getting vaccinated and
more pathways are blocked, the spread of the virus becomes slow, and the number of cases reduces by half
each day in some cities. Students will learn to express this situation as y=(½)^t
The bones and flesh of the human body is made up of hundreds of millions of cells and our bodies’ growth is
due to a cell division called “mitosis”, a concept students might have heard from their biology class. The
process of cell division, in which the human body is experiencing every day, can be mathematically
expressed with exponential growth functions.
Source: https://www.visionlearning.com/en/library/Biology/2/Cell-Division-I/196
New cells are born and old ones die in order for our body to function healthily. Red blood cells, one of the
most important cells for transporting oxygen and nutrients, have a half-life of 27.8 (approximately 30) days.
We will use the example of red blood cells to learn about exponential decay, simulating the half-life of red
blood cells by tearing paper.
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3678251/#:~:text=Its%20half%2Dlife
%20(27.8%20days,is%20adequate%20for%20many%20purposes.
What questions will you use to surface students’ initial thinking about the phenomenon?
Everyone knows the COVID pandemic, right? Let’s talk about how it was when it first began in 2020.
[mention exponential increase related questions, e.g. think about the potential coronavirus transmission
when it first began. How many positive cases do we have if one person tests positive and infects another?
How many positive cases do we have if those two people tested positive and each infected one person? ].
Once we got access to vaccines, how did it impact the cases, such as the number of cases we have lately?
[mention exponential decrease related questions].
Ask students if they know what the human body is made up of. Students may say “skin, bones, blood, hair.”
When students say, “cells”, ask how many and ask how the human body can have so many cells. Then,
mention this cell reproduction known as mitosis is why the human body has so many cells. This relates to the
mathematical concept of exponential growth, which will be covered in the lesson.
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Ask students if they know what particular cell in our body helps us function in our everyday life with proper
blood flow and oxygen. Also ask what happens to old cells in our body. Do they die? If yes, why do you think
those old cells will die? Then finally introduce to students we are going to learn blood circulation/the life cycle
of red blood cells, also known as the half-life of red blood cells.This relates to the mathematical concept of
exponential decay.
How does the lesson align to the standards (CA Common Core State Standards (CA CCSS)?
F-LE-1: Construct and compare linear, quadratic, and exponential models and solve problems.
F-LE-3: Interpret expressions for functions in terms of the situation they model
A-SSE-1: Interpret expressions that represent a quantity in terms of its context
F-LE-5: Interpret the parameters in a linear or exponential function in terms of a context
F-BF-1:Write a function that describes a relationship between two quantities
What will the students do to make sense of the phenomenon (activities)? Look for connections to the
Standards for Mathematical Practice.
SMP1: Make Sense of Problems and Persevere in Solving Them

SMP2: Reason Abstractly and Quantitatively
SMP3: Model with Mathematics
SMP5: Use Appropriate Tools Strategically
SMP8: Look for and Express Regularity in Repeated Reasoning
Why does this phenomenon matter to my students?
Exponential patterns occur in many situations in the world both naturally and anthropogenically. One of the
biggest catastrophes in world history is the COVID-19 pandemic, and this is the current event the students
we are teaching this lesson are facing. We decided to connect this well-known, impactful period of time to
math to show that the number of cases of this disease can be expressed mathematically. This will help
students to know that other real-world situations such as population growth are introduced in subjects like
science and history, and it all relates to this mathematical concept.
We chose this phenomenon because this relates to a biological concept all human beings and even animals
have in common. Unlike cultural topic-based lessons that can be challenging for all students to connect to,
this phenomenon would not have as many difficulties for students to connect to. In addition, they may have
learned it from their biology class, but we want to present the mathematical aspect of this concept, which will
deepen their understanding of the process of cell growth and cell decay in our body. Students will get to
know their body has grown over time due to this process, and their body is functioning properly, allowing
them to do everyday tasks, due to the cycle of cell growth (cell division) and cell decay.
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Part II: Clarifying Your Goals for the Topic

RESEARCH WRITING due Week 4
LESSON DESIGN due 2 weeks prior to instruction
RESEARCH WRITING - The Role of Phenomenon - DUE Week 4

Why do we use phenomena? What are the benefits for students? How is this different from “traditional”
approaches (Consider what you learned about learning theories, and student learning, and what you
experienced as a student in the modeling of a phenomenon based lesson, complete and reference one
additional reading (per student) on student funds of knowledge.
How can the phenomenon promote and build on student identity, interest, and prior knowledge?
What are some challenges you are encountering in designing and implementing phenomena? Why do you
think these arise? What tensions do you experience about this?
How are you overcoming the challenges of developing a culturally responsive and cognitively demanding
phenomenon?
We use phenomena in some math lessons because in addition to students learning the mathematical concept
required by the state standards, students will be able to understand that this mathematical concept is actually
useful outside of the classroom. For example, students will know that math topics (e.g. addition, subtraction,
fractions, proportions) can be found in everyday situations such as money and preparing ingredients to make a
dish for a certain number of people with phenomena-based lessons. In a “traditional” lesson, teachers tend to
have students copy the notes they are sharing with the students. More specifically, “traditional” math lessons
involve students learning procedures to solve equations, so students who experienced these types of lessons
are not as familiar with how these math concepts can be applied to situations in the real world. However, with
phenomena, in addition to students being able to recognize how the concept they are learning brings back
some prior mathematical knowledge, it allows students to make connections to situations in everyday life.
Schema theory relates to how prior knowledge is essential to gain new knowledge. When making connections
to everyday life, students will remember the mathematical concept even better and will find math useful. In
the journal article titled “Integrating Modeling Steps Into the High School” by Ted Wendt and Kevin Murphy,
it says, “Like many skills, modeling is best developed through practice of smaller components gradually
accumulated over time.” Instead of learning all the main traits of exponential functions in one day, students
will be spending the two days of this lesson learning the basic exponential growth and decay functions and
how these graphs look and work. On other days, they will be doing worksheets and other lessons that focus
more on solving these problems (both word problems and equations), so they will gradually gain a good
understanding on exponential functions.
While designing and implementing phenomena, I found it challenging to find data that uses simple numbers,
but connects to an actual real-world situation. I was first trying to make our lesson on exponential growth
relate to the growth and decay of COVID-19 cases, but if I tried to use real-life data, the functions were a lot
more complex with large numbers, which would result in students having difficulties understanding the
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lesson. Although all students might be able to relate to the pandemic, this topic can also be very sensitive
since some students and their families might have been negatively affected by it. Thus, implementing
phenomena can result in some cultural conflicts. To overcome the challenges of developing a culturally
responsive and cognitively demanding phenomenon, I tried to activate students’ prior knowledge and make
learning contextual. Students will be using their prior knowledge on plotting points on a xy-graph and when
they notice the pattern of the number of folds on the paper (this hands-on activity represents the process of
cell division), they will discover that the numbers relate to repeated multiplication (e.g. 8=2*2*2=2^3),
another prior knowledge. To make learning contextual, I decided to start the lesson by asking some questions
students can connect to such as, “What is the human body made up of?”, “If many cells, how many?”, “did
we have the same amount of cells as now when we’re babies and our bodies were tiny?”. “How do you guys
think our body is growing over time?”
PHENOMENON & ESSENTIAL QUESTION - DUE 14 days before instruction
Identifying a Real World Phenomenon

In order to engage students in sense-making and eliciting their ideas in a meaningful way, there needs to be
a real world phenomenon relevant to the topic of this lesson (observation, event, lab, example, experience,
etc.) What would that be? Use the checklist below to help you select a phenomenon/problem (see an
extensive checklist here)
● Is the phenomenon/problem based on an observable event or process?
● Is the phenomenon/problem contextualized in a specific time and place? (possibly at a

local community)
● Does explaining this phenomenon involve explaining a process or mechanism or data?
● Is it possible for students to construct multiple plausible explanations about this

phenomenon? (Or is there the one correct explanation?)
● Is the phenomenon/problem complex to explain (it’s “rich” in content)? Does the

phenomenon/problem draw students’ attention to key patterns, relationships, or events to
explain or key problems to solve?
● Who might feel the phenomenon matters to themselves, and who might not? Is it
comprehensible for students and possibly related to students’ lived experiences?
● How might the collective investigation into the phenomenon’s problem improve the lives of
people in the community?
● Is student identity considered to further develop a sense of mattering?
We decided to connect math with biological concepts that form our life and that we all have in common,
which are cells. Although the phenomenon in our lesson cannot be seen with the naked eye, it can be an
observable process that connects to knowledge from their biology class.
Cell division is a process in which one cell divides into two cells, which is the basis of organisms' growth,
development, and reproduction. Cell division increases the number of cells and enables organisms to
replenish senile and dead cells timely. In order to make this phenomenon close to students' real life, we
choose to have the cell division undergo multicellular organisms like plants and animals called mitosis,
especially exploring the math concepts of exponential growth behind human bone cell division (Lents and
Hesterman). This provides students with deeper learning about the human body and that cell division is a
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vital biological process for maintaining healthy bones and flesh and also a process for replenishing them.
Our body size grows along with bone size.
All students have this trait in common, even in a diverse classroom, so everyone may feel the phenomenon
matters to themselves. However, since we cannot see this real-life process with our naked eye, I want this
lesson to make connections to students’ everyday lives by mentioning questions students might have never
really deeply thought about such as, “What makes our body grow and be mobile and do things like walking
from tutorial to this class?” Students will discover that the hundreds of millions of cells that make up our body
undergo cell division and old cells that are eventually replaced by new cells from cell division undergo cell
decay, and all of this is the reason why our body functions the way it does with healthy bones, skin, and
organs. This phenomena-based lesson might help students realize how important it is to take care of their
health in order for these cell growth and decay processes to occur in our body.
Essential Question
State one or two questions addressed in this lesson
Exponential Growth: Under the idea of cell division called mitosis, where each cell split into two daughter
cells. If one cell undergoes cell division for 1, 2, 3,..., x times, how many cells (y) will we have after each
division? What patterns do you notice here between the number of times of cell division, and the number of
cells from this process?
Exponential Decay: A red blood cell has a half-life of 30 days, which means that after every half-life (every
30 days). the red blood cell will decay to half of its current size. What can you say about the proportion (y-
value) of those red blood cells after 1 half-life, 2 half lives, 3,.... (x-value)? What patterns do you notice here
between the number of days, and the proportion of red blood cells left?
KNOWLEDGE: BIG IDEAS - DUE 14 Days Before Teach
Describe the key math ideas (models, and theories. Ie. quadratic functions) and how they are related to the
real world phenomena (Ie. determining landing spot of a rocket) for this topic. Think of big ideas as what you
would like your students to be able to tell you after the lesson is over. Use the language and ideas that you
would like students in your class to be able to use.
Big ideas are rarely confined to an individual lesson. If you are writing plans for a single lesson, you may
need to include ideas from other lessons to write a coherent statement of the big ideas you want your
students to understand.
Checklist for Big Ideas. Check to see if your big ideas meet the criteria below. Erase this section if you feel
that you have met all the criteria. If you are having trouble meeting some of the criteria, use this section to
explain your difficulties.
● Do you have a coherent summary of the most important patterns, models, and principles for your
topic? Big ideas should express the key patterns and explanations in student language, not just
name them.
● Have you used important core disciplinary ideas from the California Content and Practice Standards?
● Is the language (e.g., vocabulary level) appropriate for students in your class? Big ideas don’t include
every vocabulary word in the lesson (though they should include the most important ones), and they
don’t have many specific examples. The language you use in your summary of big ideas should be
the language you would like your students to use.
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● The word “students” does NOT belong in your statement of big ideas. Think of big ideas as
what you would like your students to be able to tell you after the lesson is over.
● Does the big idea address the cultural and linguistic diversity of your students? How?
The big idea in this two-day lesson falls under the category of looking for and expressing regularity in
repeated reasoning with the mathematical concept, exponential functions (growth and decay). Students will
be finding the best function to describe the change of populations of cell growth in the form of mitosis, and
the change of populations of red blood cells experiencing its half-life. Students will be using hands-on activity
of paper folding and tearing to demonstrate the process of those phenomena (the paper will represent the
cell and folding/tearing will represent cell growth/cell decay during mitosis and the regeneration of red blood
cells). Students are allowed to express their functions in different ways, representing data in a table, plotting
the data on a graph, expressing the pattern they found on the data verbally, and writing down an equation to
describe the pattern.
1. Our lesson uses some science terms and hopefully, students have learned/heard it from their biology
class. Since there are chances that some students might have forgotten these terms, before starting
the hands-on activity, I would like to clearly define these terms during our beginning discussion. We
will be asking questions of “what do you think our bodies are made of?”, “do you think our body
contains infinitely many cells? If not, what process do you think our body is experiencing everyday in
order to balance the number of cells when new cells are kept created by cell division?” to check
students existing knowledge about the phenomenon of cellular division (creating new cells), and
cellular decay, especially half-life (removing old cells) we are going to study during this class.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES - DUE 14 days before instruction
Checklist for Objectives for Student Learning. Check to see if the objectives in your table meet the criteria
below. Erase this section if you feel that you have met all the criteria. If you are having trouble meeting
some of the criteria, use this section to explain your difficulties.
● Does each objective describe student learning—something that your students will be able to do after
the class is over—not just a teaching activity to be completed in class? It should be observable and
measurable, therefore guide your instruction and assessment. For example, “Conduct an experiment
to determine the trajectory of a thrown object” is a good learning activity, but not a good objective. It
doesn’t say what students will learn or understand as a result of conducting the experiments.
● Does each objective relate to a set of examples, not just a single example? For example, “Explain
how to determine if a system of equations has a single solution, multiple solutions, or no solutions” is
a better objective than “Explain how to solve a system of equations with one solution.”
● Are your objectives connected with your Big Ideas? Does each objective describe ways that you
would like your students to connect experiences, patterns, and explanations?
● Do you have a small number of objectives that describe significant learning? Do not write too many
small objectives. Even a unit that is several weeks long should be organized around a small number
of significant objectives.
1. Since this lesson is an introduction to exponential functions, students will be focusing on discovering
how an exponential growth function and exponential decay function works. Due to this lesson being
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an introduction, students will be spending the majority of the period trying to find two different types of
functions, so they will just be working with two functions, y=2^t and y=(½)^t. I am slightly worried that
a single example for each type of exponential function might not be enough, but the main point of this
lesson is for students to see/understand how the two types of functions operate. However, I was
thinking about creating an exit ticket, so students can individually attempt one or two problems similar
to the functions discovered in the lesson.
RESEARCH WRITING - Mathematical Model - DUE Week 4

Teach yourself, or someone else the concept that you plan on teaching your students (ie. functions).
How will you develop a deep understanding (not just textbook) of this concept?
What resources can you use?
What is helpful or challenging about this process?

What theories would you apply to your mathematical model* to ensure that all students have an opportunity to
understand this concept or idea? Explore the Progressions documents to gain insights into key understandings
that support the focus of your lesson. Select the chapter that best aligns to your lesson.
*“A mathematical model is a representation of a system or scenario that is used to gain qualitative and/ or
quantitative understanding of some real-world problems and to predict future behavior.” source
In order for students to develop a deep understanding of this concept, I will be connecting the concept of
exponential functions to a real-life topic, how the human body grows and functions, through cell growth and
cell decay. Students have learned this in their biology class, but in order for students to have a visual
understanding of the patterns found during these processes, students will get to perform a hands-on
experiment, folding and tearing paper that represents these biological processes, students will get to perform
a hands-on experiment, folding papers into half to duplicate the sections created by it to represent the process
of mitosis (exponential growth), while each group will be tearing paper into half to demonstrate the process of
cellular half-life that cells’ population shrink by half each time(exponential decay). They will be collecting
data and discovering patterns of the numbers to develop a deep understanding of how these two functions
work. In the lesson, students will have paper as a resource for the hands-on activity and each group will also
be given a poster paper to plot their data and draw a graph and will be writing what they have noticed about
how the graph works. They can also use calculators as a resource later when they discover the function
represented during the activity to see that their collected data works when plugged into the function. Then,
students will have a gallery walk and then the class as a whole will get to share their discoveries and what
ideas they had in common to learn that what they have discovered is known as an exponential growth/decay
function. There are some students who struggle with math, especially solving and graphing equations
algebraically. Due to this issue, students using a visual, hands-on activity can be very helpful to feel more
confident about understanding a mathematical concept.
Distributed expertise is when individual students (usually when working in a group) contribute their
knowledge about a certain topic/procedure to the whole. In order for students to contribute their knowledge to
mathematical modeling, students should have access to useful resources such as a calculator or mathematical
software on the laptop (The Common Core Standards Writing Team, 2013). During the lesson, students will
be working in groups of 3-4 (with people at their table), and each student will be given a role to perform the
exploratory activity, where each group of 4 students contains one paper folder/team leader, data collector,
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graph plotter, and one reporter. Students can choose the role they think they are best suitable for by
themselves in order to engage in and collaborate in a clear order during the exploring activity according to
their different zone of proximal development. According to students different zone of proximal development,
the tasks involved in the activity contains different types of representations of math. Students will be using
data tables, graphs, verbal descriptions and algebraic equations to describe the patterns of numbers, an finally,
students will able to convert their thoughts into a poster. This shows that every student in each group will be
contributing to a different portion of the activity (one student can be plotting the points, another student can
be folding or tearing the paper, another student can be collecting data) to find out the patterns of an
exponential growth and decay function as a whole. This discovery will help students be able to identify if an
exponential function is either growing or decaying in future activities and exercises (especially application
word problems) throughout the rest of this unit., by observing the increasing (duplicate) number of pieces
(increasing number of bone cell population) which created by folding the paper to half (the times of bone cell
division) is an example of exponential growth, and by observing the decreasing (shrink by half) number of
squares (number of red blood cell population) which created by taking out half of the squares (the times of red
blood cell undergoing half-life) is an example of exponential decay. Scaffolding is a method of teaching
where teachers provide a certain amount of support for a student to improve their skills. When teachers
scaffold, they try to relate a new concept to some materials students are familiar with, which can be done in
the lesson. I will relate my lesson to students’ prior knowledge on graphing points and repeated
multiplication.
TEACHER’S MATHEMATICAL MODEL ABOUT THE ANCHORING PHENOMENON - DUE 14

days before instruction
Describe your explanatory model about the real world phenomenon. You won’t notice students’ partial
understanding, languages, or alternative ideas if you do not have a good understanding about the real world
phenomenon that you bring in. I expect that your explanation is in-depth, gapless, and thorough (way beyond
one or two sentences). Your explanation should include descriptions about what happened (things to see,
be observed), how it happens (the processes before, during, after; underlying mechanism), and why that
happens (using unobservable mathematical ideas to explain how things happen)
● What happened? (observable)
● How does it happen? (processes or mechanism or data; before-during-after)
● Why does it happen? (unobservable ideas, underlying mechanism, driving forces)
We would like students to focus on finding patterns using previous math knowledge of multiplication to
describe the relationship between the number of cell division times with the number of cells under mitosis,
which is actually the repeated multiplication of 2 where the number of cells duplicates each time it is split. For
example, when a student folds a paper once in half, then they will see 2 squares. When they fold it in half
again (a total of 2 folds), they will see 4 squares. This process will continue until they can no longer fold the
paper. Students will be writing their data onto a xy-table and they will be graphing it.
To connect this phenomenon with the exponential decay function, we would also let students to finding
patterns using previous math knowledge of multiplication to describe the relationship between the number of
times a fixed number of red blood cells experience its half-life with the proportion of the left red blood cell
each time, which is actually the repeated multiplication of ½, written as y = (½)^x where x stands for the
number of half-life red blood cell experienced, and y stands for the rest proportion of red blood cell each half-
life. In order to make the microscopic change of a red blood cell half-life, we will use a hands-on activity to
simulate the process that half of the red blood cells will be removed after every 30 days. We will let the
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number of times students had to tear the paper into half to represent the number of times of the red blood
cell undergoing its half-life and let the number of left sections created each time be the left proportion of the
cell. For example, if we treat a paper as a whole as “1” red blood cell, and when we tear it in half, one of the
other halves remaining represents ½ of the red blood cell left after it undergoes its first half-life. If we
continue to tear the half paper into half, the section left stands for ¼ of the original paper, which means there
is ¼ of the red blood cell left after it experiences its second half life. Students will be repeating this process
and collecting data to plot onto a graph to discover how an exponential decay function looks like.
RESEARCH WRITING - Evidence of Learning - DUE Week 4

What counts as student evidence of understanding or learning?
How will you know if students learned or did not learn? And who learned what?
What does research tell us about how students can show their learning so that you can gather evidence of
what they know or do not know so that you can adjust your teaching accordingly?
What have you seen or learned from your experience in fieldwork that can help inform this?
While hands-on activities in my lesson will involve students working in groups and will show how well the
class as a whole understood students will be sharing ideas to the entire class such as what patterns they have
discovered, gallery walk wil give students a chance to see how others’ are doing, and allow them to share
their thoughts to the whole class. Instead of using an uniform standard to require students during the whole
learning process, students will be using the self evaluating and receiving suggestions from other students, to
monitor their learning process by themselves, allowing students from all levels to develop and promote their
mathematical skills at the same time. This also give us as teachers a chance to see how students’ knowledge
are developed upon their existing knowledge. Students works on their own posters, and their comments on
others’ posters during gallery walk are all good ways for us to finding out if students are on the right track
during independent learning. Finally, we will have a whole class discussion to share what are some common
things on students findings, and what are some differences. By judging if those results are precise through
agreement and disagreement, students will be able to inspire from each others to reach the common learning
goal, and learn from any types of mistakes such as calculation, concept mistakes that can happen during the
exploring stage. During the fieldwork, students are doing excellent jobs of learning from others by explaining
results and comparing findings through either small group and whole class discussion. Listening to students’
discussion of how they approach the question, and why they choose to approach it in a certain way, and
asking guiding questions to initiate students’ discussion will also let us learn what’re students’ existing
knowledge, what they still need to learn and what is the best way to surface students’ thinking and guide them
in completing the tasks. Exit tickets with one or two problems related to the lesson allows me to see how well
each student in the classroom understood the concept. Based on how well they performed on the exit tickets
and especially the techniques they have used to solve the problems, I can see what they know and what they
do not know. Research tells us that students can show their learning so that I can gather evidence through
multiple methods such as exit tickets, individual reflections, and a class discussion on how they think the
mathematical concept taught in the lesson works overall. When analyzing each students’ performance on exit
tickets and reflections, I can find a pattern of what students know and what they do not know very well.
Similarly, in a class discussion, students will be connecting to each others’ responses when speaking about the
mathematical concept which will help me form an idea about what they have learned as a whole and what
they struggled with. Based on my experience with my very first lesson in an elementary classroom, the exit
ticket definitely allowed me to see if students overall learned how to divide fractions using visual models or
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not. I noticed that some students struggled with determining how they should exactly divide up the rectangle
before coloring the proper fractions. This made me realize that I didn’t spend much time analyzing students’
progress during the activity and some time to ask questions.
EVIDENCE OF STUDENT UNDERSTANDING- DUE 14 days before instruction
● What type of assessments do you plan to use to support student learning? How will you know if they
learned or not?
● Identify at least one in-the-moment, check for understanding type of assessment you plan to use
during this lesson (ie. asking students to verbally share one thing they know about a concept).
● Identify at least one end of lesson type assessment you plan to use to see what students have learned
(ie. an exit ticket, or end of day reflection).
As for assessments, I am planning to have students bring prior knowledge, a check for understanding type of
assessment, and have them complete exit tickets before leaving the classroom. During the lesson, I would
like to bring students’ prior knowledge as a check for understanding type of assessment. For example, when
I am teaching this lesson on exponential functions, I would like to ask students how I can get the data
collected on a table through hands-on activity onto a graph. This will bring their prior knowledge on plotting
points and plugging in ordered pairs to a function, which relates to a prior unit on linear equations, and
students making connections to prior knowledge will let me know that students are actually understanding
what I am teaching. An end-of-lesson type assessment I am planning to use is to have students individually
complete exit tickets, which consists of one to two problems similar to the lesson to support their learning. I
will be able to know if they have learned or not based on the techniques they are using to complete the exit
ticket and if this technique is appropriate for solving those problems.
During the lessons, we plan to let students display their thoughts by demonstrating their group discussion
results on a poster, and do a gallery walk after students finish exploring the knowledge within their own
groups, and see how other groups did during the exploration stage. During the gallery walk, students will
write down their findings and wonderings by observing others’ approaches as comments on the posters, in
order to get deeply understanding of many plausible ways of solving the question, and compare the
differences and similarities between their ideas. After students are done with this process, students will be
given a chance to demonstrate their thoughts by explaining what is on their poster to the whole class, and
compare their results with each others’, then finally summarizing the best and common-agreed answers
together. During the process of students presenting their findings, we will always use key questions such as
“does the equation you write works for all values of x?” to make sure students are on the right track.
At the end of the lesson (after the exploring stage), students will be able to work individually to deal with the
change of y depending on the change of x when the number of x gets huge. will be able to learn how to use
tools, such as calculators, strategically to write and solve exponential functions given by the real world
context independently, and define the meaning of unknowns involved in the equations. Noticing that, the
model of folding the paper into half may not be always suitable to demonstrate the process of bone cell
division because we can only fold a paper seven times. Since our bone cells will never stop dividing as long
as our body never stops developing. In this case, students will learn how to use technology or calculators
strategically to write and solve exponential growth functions as the value of x (the number of times our bone
cells divide) gets huge. Similarly, tearing the paper into half will also not be suitable to demonstrate the
process of a red blood cell’s half-life. Thus, in the early stage students will explore the knowledge by working
with their peers, but in the end, students will learn how to apply the knowledge they explored by themselves.
Students will also be given the chance to share their thoughts to the whole class.
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Part III: Classroom Activities

(Due 1 week prior to instruction)
ELICITING STUDENTS’ IDEAS- DUE 7 days before instruction
Goal: Making students’ thinking visible

The purpose of this assignment is providing opportunities for you to practice one core practice presented in
our methods course, that is eliciting students’ ideas. Describe how you are going to elicit students’ ideas in
this lesson.
Designing task, tools, and talk

Principle: make students’ ideas, languages and relevant experiences
visible and public to be recognized and used by both all the learners and a
teacher in a classroom learning community
Strategies:
● Multiple ways of expressing ideas (drawing, speaking, writing)
● Providing scaffolding to express ideas
● Not using any academic languages at this stage
● Make sure that there is no “the right answer”
Task: describe instructional task that you are going to use to elicit
students’ ideas. Think of the following question to design your task:
● What am I going to ask students to do? What will be produced upon completion of
the task?
● How do my students do this work? What procedure do they follow? Are they working individually or
as a group?
● What resources would be useful to complete this task, and how can I make it accessible to my
students?
Talk: prepare your back-pocket questions using D1 primer (see the D1 primer on the website)
● What questions do I ask when I launch the task and when students implement the task?
● What discourse moves am I going to use to elicit students’ ideas?
Tools or scaffolds:
It is highly likely that some students in your classroom have some difficulties in completing the task as
expected, especially when the task is high cognitive demand (such as making sense of real world
phenomena). What support would you provide to make sure that everyone in your classroom successfully
complete the task? Tools are something that you can use over and over, across topic or lesson. It always
serves for the same function. A good example of tool is the framework of “Before/during/after.” It always
presses students to think about the mechanism or process. In contrast, scaffold is temporary support to
assist the work usually for novice. When they become proficient, the scaffold will be removed. Fading is the
key feature of scaffolds. In a real instructional context, it is less important to distinguish tools from scaffolds.
We only need to make sure that every student in our classroom can be successful—completing intellectually
challenging task with high quality. So question is going to be:
● What goes on in completing the task that you propose?
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● Who may have difficulties and why?
● What support would be necessary to assist those students? how am I going to provide that support?
Use the space below to summarize the lesson before you go to the details of the daily lesson plan. Be sure
to describe how activities are low floor and high ceiling, allowing different students an entry point and access
to the curriculum in a meaningful way
Exponential growth function (day 1 lesson):

1. Ask questions: What are our bodies made up of? What exactly allows our bodies to grow over time and move
every day?
2. Show a video on mitosis.
3. Give directions on the bone cell division activity. Explain to students that they will work with their pre-assigned
4- people group to complete the task, but still, they need to complete their own worksheets individually.
4. Give students materials and let them work for 15-20 minutes on the hands-on activity and poster.
5. Then, let all groups walk around and check each other’s posters. Are all posters pretty similar? What have you
guys all found in common? Anything that you had thoughts about that wasn’t displayed on any groups’ posters?
6. Then ask students this question: What equation can you think of that can describe the relationship between the
number of cell divisions and the number of cells produced? How do you know if this equation will work or not?
7. Then, let students know the pattern they have discovered represents an exponential growth function. Equation
is in the form y=b^x (y=2^x for this situation)
8. When the values involved get larger and larger, let students deeply think about whether the folding paper model
is more suitable for the phenomenon. Introduce to students how to use a calculator to solve exponential growth
functions. Students will finally be able to solve exponential decay problems by themselves.
Exponential decay function (day 2 lesson):
1. Ask questions: What are our bodies made up of? What exactly allows our bodies to grow over time and move
every day?
2. Show a video on what half-life means.
3. Give directions on the red blood cell half-life activity. Explain to students that they will work with their pre-
assigned 4- people group to complete the task, but still, they need to complete their own worksheet individually.
4. Give students materials and let them work for 15-20 minutes on the hands-on activity and poster.
5. Then, let all groups walk around and check each other’s posters. Are all posters pretty similar? What have you
guys all found in common? Anything you had thoughts about that wasn’t displayed on any groups’ posters?
6. Then ask students this question: What equation can you think of that can describe the relationship between the
number of red blood cells undergoing its half-life and the proportion of red blood cells left? How do you know if
this equation will always work or not?
7. Then, let students know the pattern they have discovered represents an exponential growth decay function.
Equation is in the form y=b^x (y=(½)^x for this situation)
8. When the values involved get larger and larger, let students think about whether the paper-tearing model is
more suitable for the phenomenon. Introduce to students how to use a calculator to solve exponential decay
functions. Students will finally be able to solve exponential decay problems by themselves.
On Day 1 of the lesson, students will be discovering what an exponential growth function is. More specifically, they will
be discovering a function that does not increase at a constant rate like linear equations, but a function that increases
more and more rapidly with hands-on activity. They will see that an exponential function has an input value, “x” as an
exponent. In the beginning of the lesson, students will be asked, “What are our bodies made up of? What exactly allows
our bodies to grow over time and move everyday?” Students’ answers to this question (hopefully, students will say
“cell”) will bring a conversation that will bring questions from me such as “How many cells do you think we have? Did we
have the same number of cells when we were small babies compared to now? What do you think is the process that
allows cells to form?” Then, cell division, particularly mitosis, is a process that allows one cell to form two daughter cells,
and this is why our body grows and stays healthy. Some students might not clearly remember cell division from their
biology class, so for students to feel more familiar about this process, they will watch a short video on it. Then, students
will be given directions and will be working on the hands-on activity with their tablemates where they will be collecting
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data while folding the paper to represent cell division and then they will be making a poster with a graph and one or two
sentences about what they have observed. Through this activity, I expect students to have thoughts such as, “I see that
each fold represents a cell division process (mitosis), and after each fold, the number of squares that form represents
the amount of cells produced from this process. Is there some kind of pattern between the number of cell divisions and
the number of cells produced? When I graph this, it looks like a curve that continues to go up.” I, as the teacher, have
questions for students to think about such as, “Look at the second page of the worksheet. What kind of pattern did you
find with the amount of cells produced (the y value)? If the curve looks like it continues to go up, can you fold the paper
more than the amount of data you have collected through the activity? If you can’t fold the paper more but if you want to
show that this curve continues to go up, what is a great way to express this situation (an equation! particularly, y=2^x)?”
After students discover what an exponential growth function looks like and how it works, they will be individually working
on an exit ticket, so I can see how well they understood my lesson.
On Day 2 of the lesson, students will be discovering what an exponential decay function is. On Day 1, they saw that the
curve, which represents the growth of cells in our body through cell division, continues to go up. However, can we have
infinitely many cells inside our body if cell division is happening every day? This question will bring students to a
conversation where they discover that there also is a process called cellular decay (students may have also heard this
from their biology class) where old cells in our body die. More specifically, students will be introduced to half-life, which
is the amount of time it takes for a cell (and many organisms/populations) to break down to half of its initial size. They
will also watch a video on half-life before working on the hands-on group activity (more details on the activity in
overview of activities sequences) that represents the process of a red blood cell undergoing cellular decay based on its
half-life. Similar to Day 1, students will be making a poster with a graph and one or two sentences about what they have
observed. Through this activity, I expect students to have thoughts such as, “I see that each cut represents each half-
life and when I place the cutted paper on top of the grid, this represents the proportion of the cell remaining from this
decaying process. What kind of pattern is there with the proportion of a red blood cell remaining after each half life?
When I graph this, it looks like a curve that goes down and I noticed that after each half life, the proportion of the cell
gets smaller and smaller. That is probably why this graph is decreasing unlike an exponential growth function.” I, as the
teacher, have questions for students to think about such as, “Look at the second page of the worksheet. What kind of
pattern did you find with the proportion of the cell remaining (the y value)? Based on this pattern you have found, what
can represent this pattern? If an equation can represent this pattern, what equation?” After students discover what an
exponential decay function looks like and how it works, they will be individually working on an exit ticket, so I can see
how well they understood my lesson.
OVERVIEW OF ACTIVITIES SEQUENCES FOR 3 DAYS - DUE 7 days before instruction
● You can plan for more or less than 3 days if necessary (at least 2)
● You should use the Monitoring Tool at least twice during the lesson to orchestrate discourse and attach
copies at the end of the document.
DAY 1
Learning activities In groups of 3 to 4, students will do a paper-folding activity to demonstrate how bone
cells divide.
Students will fill in a table where the x-value represents the number of cell divisions
(number of folds on the paper), and the y-value represents the number of cells
produced from cell division (number of squares formed on the paper after folding).
Then, they will plot these data values onto a rectangular coordinate system with an x
and y-axis.
Students will share their thoughts and compare their findings with others in the class
17
through a gallery walk and a class discussion.
Students will discover that a paper cannot be folded numerous times, so students will
learn how to use a calculator to solve exponential functions when the numbers get
large.
Learning objectives Students will discover what/how an exponential growth function/graph looks like.
Students will find the exponential growth equation (y=b^x) under a real-world context
of cell division. Students will understand exponential functions can be expressed as
repeated multiplication. Students will learn how to type and evaluate a basic
exponential expression (e.g., 2^40) on the calculator.
What students will During the introduction, which discusses the phenomenon, students will notice that
see/observe/notice our body development depends on a process known as cell division, particularly
mitosis. They will be folding a paper in half as many times as possible and counting
the number of squares formed to find patterns between the x and y values on their
table. In addition, students will notice that folding a piece of paper in half and seeing
more squares form represents cells doubling from mitosis. When students graph their
data, they will see that the graph is growing fast but not growing at a constant rate like
a linear function; the y-value multiples by two every time. Students will notice that they
cannot fold the paper infinitely many times, so they might wonder if there is a better
way to represent this pattern they have discovered.
What students will Students will learn that, unlike a positive linear equation which increases at a constant
learn rate, an exponential growth function grows more and more rapidly. Students will learn
that the number of cells produced (the y-value) can be written out as multiples of 2
and then as a power. After repeating this process with their collected data, they will
learn that the powers are in the form y=2^x, and they will learn what they discovered
is an exponential function and how these functions work and look like. Students will
learn how to type larger exponential functions that cannot be done by hand onto a
calculator.
Connection to Students will use their previous math knowledge, such as recognizing what quantities
anchoring matter (how does the number of folds affect the number of squares produced to
phenomenon/big represent the process of cell division), defining variables (what do x and y
ideas/previous represent?), inputting the data from the activity onto a table, plotting points from a
lessons table onto a rectangular coordinate system, and multiplication. This lesson on
exponential growth connects to cells and cell division, which students may have
learned from their biology class.
Assessment tasks Students will be asked to share any similarities they found between all groups'
(how do you know posters after the gallery walk, where they will compare their graphs and observations
whether students to other groups' graphs and observations. Listening to students' thoughts, such as
accomplish the what patterns they have noticed, will allow me to see if students were able to discover
learning objectives how an exponential growth function looks and how it operates. In addition, when
or not?) students are working on the activity and are looking at other groups' posters during
the gallery walk, I want to prepare back pocket questions such as, "If this group's
graph has an arrow on the part that goes up, what does this mean about the function
(is it increasing infinitely)? If it's increasing infinitely, is our body made with infinitely
many cells?" To see if students were able to discover that this function they are
investigating is different from linear functions, a concept most of the students are
skilled with, I also want them to work on a table on the second page of the worksheet
once their group is done collecting data and drawing a graph of that data. This second
table consists of students having to write out the number of cells produced from each
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cell division as multiples of 2 and then as a power (to understand it better, check out
the second page of Day 1’s worksheet). Their performance on this second table will
allow me to see if students could see what values remain the same and what values
change, and how this pattern can be expressed as an exponential equation.
DAY 2
Learning activities In groups of 3 to 4, students will be performing an activity where they will tear a piece
of paper representing a cell as many times as possible (this activity represents an
exponential decay function). Students will be given a plain piece of paper and a
gridded paper. They will be cutting the paper in half to represent each round of cell
decay, and they will put the cut paper on top of the gridded paper to see what fraction
represents the cell decay (e.g., students rip one paper in half, and they rip the half
piece into half, a total of 2 cell decay stages. Then, students will place the remaining
piece of paper on top of the grid to see what fraction represents the cell remaining. In
this example, the fraction will be 1/4).
Students will be filling in a table where the x-value represents the number of stages of
cell decay, and the y-value represents the number of cells remaining after each cell
decay, and they will be graphing the data values onto a rectangular coordinate
system.
Students will share their thoughts and compare their findings with others in the class
through a gallery walk and a class discussion.
Learning objectives Students will discover what/how an exponential decay function/graph looks like.
Students will discover the exponential decay equation (y=(½)^x) under a real-world
context of the half-life of red blood cells. Students will understand exponential
functions can be expressed as repeated multiplication, and more specifically,
exponential decay functions can be expressed as repeated multiplication of fractions,
unlike exponential growth functions. Students will be given some time at the end of
the lesson to type fractions on a calculator to represent an exponential decay function
(e.g. (½)^40) to find the number of cell(s) remaining after a larger number of days that
cannot be done with the hands-on activity and by hand.
What students will While students are graphing, they will notice that, unlike an exponential growth
see/observe/notice function that increases more and more rapidly, an exponential decay function
undergoes a rapid decrease in the beginning. Students will see that the number of
cells remaining (the y-value) after every 30 days can be written out as multiples of 1/2
and then as a power.
What students will After their hands-on activity, students will learn what an exponential decay graph
learn looks like and how it can be written as a function. Students will learn how to type
fractions on the calculator and how to type larger exponential decay functions that
cannot be done by hand easily (e.g., have students type (½)^10).
Connection to Students will use their previous math knowledge, such as recognizing what quantities
anchoring matter (how does the number of times the paper is cut affect the fractional area of the
phenomenon/big paper) defining variables (what do x and y represent?), inputting the data from the
ideas/previous activity onto a table, plotting points from a table onto a rectangular coordinate system,
lessons and multiplying fractions. This lesson on exponential decay connects to cells,
particularly red blood cells, which students may have learned from their biology class.
Assessment tasks Students will be asked to share any similarities they found between all groups'
(how do you know posters after the gallery walk, where they will compare their graphs and observations
19
whether students to other groups' graphs and observations. Listening to students' thoughts, such as
accomplish the what patterns they have noticed, will allow me to see if students were able to discover
learning objectives how an exponential decay function looks and how it operates. In addition, when
or not?) students are working on the activity and are looking at other groups' posters during
the gallery walk, I want to prepare back pocket questions such as, "What have you
noticed between the decrease in the cell size from stage 1 to stage 2 versus the
decrease in the cell size from stage 2 to stage 3?" This example question will help me
see if students can see how an exponential decay function works compared to a
linear equation or exponential growth function from Day 1.
Like Day 1, I also want them to work on a table on the second page of the worksheet
once their group is done collecting data and drawing a graph. Their performance on
this second table will allow me to see if students could see what values remain the
same and what values change, and how this pattern can be expressed as an
exponential equation.
DAY 3
Learning activities N/A
Learning objectives N/A
What students will N/A

see/observe/notice
What students will N/A

learn
Connection to N/A
anchoring
phenomenon/big
ideas/previous
lessons
Assessment tasks N/A

(how do you know
whether students
accomplish the
learning objectives
or not?)
DAY 1 LESSON PLANNING - DUE 7 days before instruction
Introduction (__10__ minutes )
Tied to Learning Outcomes: Describe major events here, including launch of a task
Sequence/
Activities/ The whole class will be asked, “What are our bodies made up of? What exactly allows
Groupings our bodies to grow over time and move every day?”. These questions will lead to a small
discussion on cells and the fact that we grow will lead to our phenomenon, cell division,
particularly mitosis. Students might remember this knowledge from their biology class.
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Still, for students to remember this or learn more about this concept, we will present a
video on mitosis before they get to work on their group activity.
Making thinking visible: Describe how you are going to launch a task;
● How would you like to open the conversation? What question would you pose?
● How would you help students to understand the goals of this activity (why we are
doing this?)
● How would you help students to see the connection of this task to the prior
lessons?
● What resources (material, human, or social) would be useful to complete this
Teacher actions/ task, and how can I make them accessible to my students?
questions ● What additional supports would you provide to make sure that all students can
successfully complete this task?
The whole class will be asked, “What are our bodies made up of? What exactly allows
our bodies to grow over time and move every day?”. As a hint, I can tell students that
these things our bodies is made up of is very tiny (they can think about science and what
living organisms are made up of)
Student actions/ Students will raise their hands and share their thoughts on the questions that will bring
student thinking/ the phenomenon of the lesson, mitosis. Students will think about science, particularly
assessment biology, with the questions (making connections to science). Students will be watching a
video on mitosis. They will understand how this process works before starting the hands-
on activity that represents this process and discovering it can be represented
mathematically. To see if students have a better understanding of what mitosis is after
the video, I want to ask students to share with their table one fact they learned about this
process and I will pick out a few students’ names to have them share what they know
about this process. Then, they will be working on a hands-on activity that represents this
process and discovering it can be represented mathematically.
Body of the Lesson (__40__ minutes )

This is the phase of “Task Implementation.” Describe the sequence of teaching
Sequence/ episodes here (e.g., whole group discussion, data collection activity, small group
Activities/ discussion, individual seat work, making public representation, think-pair-share, sharing
Groupings out, gallery work etc.)
After watching the video with the whole class, I want to ask students to share with their
table one fact they learned about this process and I will pick out a few students’ names
to have them share what they know about this process. Then, with directions from me,
students will work in groups of 3 to 4 on the hands-on activity representing mitosis. They
will collect data using a table and make a poster with their group that has the graph of
their data and a sentence or two on their findings about the graph.
Then, all groups will go on a gallery walk and compare their graphs to other groups’
graphs.
I will ask questions such as, “What patterns have you found between the number of
cellular divisions and the population of cells?” Then, the class will discuss what they
found similar, such as the patterns of the y values on the graph. To help students will
discover this is an exponential growth function, which y=2^x represents. represented by
y=2^x, I will ask, “How many folds can you do at most by using paper to demonstrate the
process of cell division? Remember our bone cells are undergoing cell division every
single day. Are you able to fold your paper more than ___ times to demonstrate this
process? Based on what you filled out for the table on the second page through this
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activity, what mathematical equation can represent the number of divisions and the
number of cells formed?”
Describe instructional tasks, tools (scaffolds), and talk moves that you are going to use
Teacher actions/ in each or across teaching episodes. Think of the following question:
questions ● What questions do I ask when students implement the task?
● Who may have difficulties in completing this task and why?
● What support would be necessary to assist those students? How am I going to
provide that support?
During the exploring stage, students will collaborate with each other and use data from a
folding paper model representing the cell division times and population growth to create
a data table and draw a graph to describe the data they collect. We will demonstrate how
to fold the paper into the half when we fold the paper once and twice by showing
students the photo of folding on the slides, and students will need to count the pieces
(number of cells) created by folding (number of times of cell division), then record those
data on their data table on the worksheet. Each student will also be filling in the data
table on their own worksheets, and they will be graphing on the worksheet before the
group as a whole agrees with their findings and makes the poster. Since we can only
fold a paper seven times, many students may break away from the model and write they
fold the paper more than seven times (cell divides seven times), where we use this
model on purpose. Later students will learn that cells never stop dividing, and this model
is no longer suitable, so they need to use tools like calculators strategically to solve
larger values. At this time, I will ask students who fold their paper less than seven times
whether we can continue folding and ask students who fold the paper more than seven
times to try it on their own sheet of paper to see whether it will work or not. Students will
realize that it is incredibly challenging to fold the paper more than a certain number of
times. However, when they graph their data, they might see that the graph is increasing
(it is going upwards), so they will wonder if there is some kind of mathematical way to
represent this. After making the poster with their graph and observation, students will try
out the second page of the worksheet (check out the worksheet to understand this
better) and discover that there is an equation that can represent this and using the
equation to find the number of cells produced after a larger amount of cell divisions is
very convenient.
In the graph students create, students may be limited by the data table since the folding
paper model can only represent seven times a small number of cell divisions; some
students will draw a continuous graph. In this case, I will ask students if our bone cells
are undergoing cell division every single day, is the small number of cell divisions they
found through the activity the maximum amount of cell divisions that can happen. our
cells will stop splitting. If not, students will be asked what they will change or add to their
graph to represent this situation, where students can draw an arrow on the plot they
graphed to represent this function is continuous and infinitely continues to increase.
Students may also draw a straight line connecting data points on the graph. At this time,
I will let students think about the graph in the way of the slope. When we draw linear
functions, the slope remains constant, but as the times of cell division increase, the cell
population grows more and more rapidly. Students will be asked to determine if they
think the slope will remain the same. If not, students will think about how to make this
graph properly (when the slope keeps growing too) and more smoothly, meaning that
students will use a curve shape plot to describe the data. I will ask students during the
gallery walk, “What have you noticed between the increase in the number of cells from 1
cellular division to 2 cellular divisions versus the increase in the number of cells from 2
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cellular divisions to 3 cellular divisions?” This will help students to realize that this data
they have collected is different from a linear function, which they are skilled with.
Students will be allowed to compare their answers with other groups during the gallery
walk and write down their findings and wonderings as comments on other groups’
posters. The questions we can ask are to let students justify the differences between
their works and the reason which one will better represent the relationship between
times of cell division and the population of bone cells better.
Describe (a) learning artifacts that will be produced, (b) expected students’ responses
(talk or performance), (c) anticipating difficulties
Students will collaborate with their group members in a 4-people group. Each student will
be given distinct roles as paper folder/team leader, data collector, graph plotter, and
reporter. Students will finish the activity (worksheet and poster) together in each group
instead of only being in charge of their own role; students will complete their own
worksheets individually when collaborating with group members. The worksheet and
poster will be the assessment for us to monitor and demonstrate if students complete the
learning goals. On the posters and worksheets, I will be checking if students are getting
the correct patterns like how the y-value on their data table is doubling after each cell
Student actions/ division. This pattern is essential in order for students to discover the function that
student thinking/ represents it.
assessment Students might mention thoughts during the activity, like, “What kind of pattern is there
between the numbers?” Someone else might say, “I think there is some pattern with the
y-values we have collected. It’s doubling each time.” They might wonder, “Why is this
graph curved, unlike a linear equation I’m used to?”
The difficulty students might face is how to collect data only by using the model
according to the instruction, where students can at most fold a paper seven times and
find the best way to represent that data into a graph with a curved shape instead of a
straight line. Students will also be thinking if the graph continues to increase by
considering whether our bone cells continue splitting and growing, a process that occurs
in our body every single day.
Closure (__10__ minutes )

Sequence/ Students will discover this activity is unsuitable paper folding is difficult to use for finding
Activities/ the number of cells produced from a larger number of cell divisions (e.g. how many cells
Groupings are there after 20 cellular divisions?), so they will learn how to type an exponential
growth function on the calculator. Then, students will be given a simple problem and will
individually use the calculator to solve the problem. To see how well students
understood the lesson, they will be given an exit ticket to complete individually before
leaving the classroom.
Teacher How many folds can you do by using paper to demonstrate the process of bone cell
actions/questions division? Remember, our bone cells undergo cell division every day, which is always
growing. Are you able to fold your paper infinitely many times to demonstrate this
process? Will this activity still be suitable when x (the number of times a bone cell
undergoes cell division) gets really big? What equation can represent this situation?
How many times were you able to fold your paper into half to visually see the process of
cellular division? Remember new cells are growing inside our bodies every single day
23
Student actions/ Students will fold the paper into half each time and write their data onto the table.
student thinking/ Students will think, “I think the number of squares formed after each fold doubles. Since
assessment this is on a table representing a function, how can I write this out as an equation?” I can
ask, “Look at the number of cells produced on your data table. What kind of pattern is
there between the number of cells produced after each cell division?”
Attachments
If you have electronic files (slides, worksheet, or tools) you are using with your lesson, please link them here.
● https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1MjoA8rgL53-a60frtyIfeLD3mjSpfjI2NVqX5B5onQs/
edit#slide=id.g2067664e404_0_30 (Lesson Slides)
● https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S7BwfcJxAapU8WYuQdf4SBxs_wZQTpK7/view?usp=sharing
(Exponential Growth Worksheet)
● https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zYRa-bj8GQJIh62_JMcLaZBa5FgYm2rH/view?usp=sharing (Day 1
Exit Ticket)
DAY 2 LESSON PLANNING - DUE 7 days before instruction

Please make a copy of this table and complete if teaching 3-day lesson
Introduction (_10_ minutes )
Tied to Learning Outcomes: Describe major events here, including launch of a task
Sequence/
Activities/ On Day 1, the whole class ended the lesson wondering if their bodies were made up of
Groupings infinitely many cells. This question from the previous lesson will lead to a small
discussion on how our cells die and new ones replace old ones. Particularly, red blood
cells, which provide our bodies with oxygen through blood flow, turn into half of their
original size every 30 days. This phenomenon will lead students to work on a hands-on
activity representing a red blood cell undergoing cell decay.
On Day 1’s lesson, students explored what an exponential growth function is with the
phenomenon of cellular division. Students discovered that an exponential growth
function continues to increase, and if this is connected to the phenomenon, it portrays
how cellular division is occurring in our body every single day. However, if we
In this lesson, students will continue to study the population of cells, especially red blood
cells in our body, and think about this question “if our cells never stop splitting, does it
mean our body has infinitely many cells? If not, what is the process causing our bodies
to still have a finite number of cells?” Students will finally learn the process of balancing
the number of cells is called cell decay. In this lesson, we will focus on a cell decay
called half-life which ensures our body circulates regularly, removing old cells that are
functioning less effectively, and leaving space for new cells.
Making thinking visible: Describe how you are going to launch a task;
Teacher actions/ ● How would you like to open the conversation? What question would you pose?
questions ● How would you help students to understand the goals of this activity (why we are
doing this?)
● How would you help students to see the connection of this task to the prior
lessons?
24
● What resources (material, human, or social) would be useful to complete this
task, and how can I make them accessible to my students?
● What additional support would you provide to make sure that all students can
successfully complete this task?
I will be referring back to the question during the closure of Day 1’s lesson: "Do you think
cells grow infinitely?”. If students say no, I can ask, “What happens to some of the cells if
you think they don’t grow infinitely?” “We learned that since our body is
functioning/developing, the process of cellular division also occurs all the time. If the
graph continues to increase with the arrow, where does the graph go all the way up to?
However, do you think an infinite amount of cells are produced in our body if this process
is always happening? If not, why do you think so? What procedure is happening to
balance the number of new cells and old cells in our body?‘
Student actions/ Students will be raising their hands and sharing their thoughts on the questions that will
student thinking/ bring the phenomenon of the lesson, cell decay of a red blood cell. Students will think
assessment about science, particularly biology, with the questions (making connections to science).
Body of the Lesson (_40 minutes )

This is the phase of “Task Implementation.” Describe the sequence of teaching
episodes here (e.g., whole group discussion, data collection activity, small group
discussion, individual seat work, making public representation, think-pair-share, sharing
out, gallery work etc.)
After some directions from the instructor, Students will work in groups of 3 to 4 on the
hands-on activity representing a red blood cell decaying. Students will be filling out the
worksheet where they have to collect data on a data table, and produce a graph based
on the data they have collected. Finally, students will convert what they discussed and
Sequence/ write on their worksheet into a poster which contains their plotted graph (students have
Activities/ to label the x and y axis of their graphs) and a short answer description of what they
Groupings found of the pattern between the number of half-life and the fractional area of the red
blood cell remaining. They will collect data using a table and make a poster with their
group that has the graph of their data and a sentence or two on their findings about the
graph.
Then, all groups will go on a gallery walk and compare their graphs to other groups’
graphs.
Then, the class as a whole will discuss what they found similar, such as the patterns of
the y values on the graph. Students will discover this is an exponential decay function,
represented by y=(½)^x.
Describe instructional tasks, tools (scaffolds), and talk moves that you are going to use
Teacher actions/ in each or across teaching episodes. Think of the following question:
questions ● What questions do I ask when students implement the task?
● Who may have difficulties in completing this task and why?
● What support would be necessary to assist those students? How am I going to
provide that support?
During the exploring stage, students will collaborate with their group members and
discover the relation between the number of times a red blood cell undergoes half-lives
and the change in the proportion of a red blood cell. First, I will be giving instructions to
students on how to tear paper, and demonstrating the first two tears for students, and
25
telling them to fill out the data table at the same time when they tear the paper. Students
can use a paper-tearing model to represent the microscopic cell population shrinking
process. While students continue to fill out the data table while cutting the paper into half
and placing it on the grid to see what the fractional area of the amount of cell remaining
is, I can visit each table and ask, “Look at the part of your data table that shows the
amount of a cell remaining. What kind of pattern is there between each value?” When
students are done filling out the first page of their worksheet and creating their poster, I
can ask, “Check out the second table on the second page of your worksheet. How can
this pattern help develop a function that represents this graph? We will give students a
grid paper with 64 squares on it, and the instruction is that students will tear the paper
into as much as they can and determine the left proportion of the paper size compared to
the original one. We treat the times of paper tearing as the time the red blood cell
undergoes half-life and see the original paper as a whole as a “1” cell. We will treat the
left part of each tearing as the leftover proportion of the red blood cell. We will
demonstrate the first and second tearing to the students and let students know that
instead of tearing the original paper size several times, we are going to tear one of the
torn papers into half each time. For the first tearing, we tore the whole paper in half, and
the amount of paper left was ½. When we keep tearing it down for the second tearing,
we tear the ½ paper into half, and the left proportion is ¼. Each time students rip the
paper in half, they will place it on top of the gridded paper with 64 squares representing
one whole cell to see what fraction represents the torn paper (the amount of cell
remaining). Students will continue doing this process until they can no longer split the
paper in half in order to complete the data table. If students feel challenged to determine
the proportion, they can use the grid on the paper and compare how many squares are
left with the total of 64 squares.
After collecting data, students will display them by plotting a graph. Like the exponential
growth graph, students will also use curves to represent the pattern involved in the data.
If students use straight lines to the connecting point, we will ask students to recall what
we did in day 1’s lesson, where we observed the slope continue to change instead of
remaining the same; what should we change to make the graph more smooth according
to the pattern of slope change. Students will determine the meaning of the slope here is
the rate of red blood cell decay for it experiencing half-life each time, and the rate of red
blood cell population decaying slower and slower as the times of half-life increase.
Students will also determine if the graph will continue going infinitely by thinking, “do you
think in order to keep our body circulating normally, if new cells continue to come in
under cell division, will old cells continue moving away from our bodies?” Students will
draw an arrow on their graph to demonstrate the process of red blood cells experiencing
half-life will never stop.
Finally, students will analyze the patterns they find among the data verbally, find that the
red blood cell population continues to shrink by ½ each time, and determine the pattern
shown on the graph has a decreasing trend.
Describe (a) learning artifacts that will be produced, (b) expected students’ responses
Student actions/ (talk or performance), (c) anticipating difficulties
student thinking/
assessment Students will collaborate with their group members in a 3 to 4 people group. To see if
each member contributes equally to the activity, I will be walking around the classroom
and see each table’s progress. Based on the instructions I have given before allowing
them to work together, while one student is in charge of cutting the paper, I want
everyone to be writing down the number of times the paper has been cut and the
proportion of the square remaining when placed on the grid. While doing this, I want to
ask students to analyze the pattern between the fractions. I also want students to see
26
how their graph looks and ask themselves, “Is it decreasing? Is it decreasing constantly
or not?, etc.” Students will complete a worksheet (each student gets one worksheet and
will be filling it out while discussing/working with their group) and will create a poster that
shows the graph of their data and observations.
Students might mention thoughts during the activity, like, “What kind of pattern is there
between the numbers?” Someone else might say, “I think there is some sort of pattern
with the y-values we have collected. The denominator of the y-values is increasing by 2.
(or the y-values are multiplied by ½)” They might think, “Compared to the graph from
yesterday that grows upwards, this graph seems to be decreasing.”
A difficulty students might face is they need to make sure that when they split the plain
paper in half each time, they need to make sure that they have to continue splitting only
one of the papers into half, not both. For example, when a student divides an 8x8 paper
into half, they have to divide only one of the half papers into another half before placing
the torn paper onto the grid.
Closure (__10_ minutes )

Sequence/ Students will discover this activity is unsuitable for a larger number of half-lives/cell
Activities/ decay, so they will learn how to type an exponential decay function on the calculator.
Groupings They will also be introduced to typing a fraction on the calculator since many students
use the fraction to divide and get a decimal value. Then, students will be given a simple
problem and will individually use the calculator to solve it. To see how well students
understood the lesson, they will be given an exit ticket to complete before leaving the
classroom.
Teacher How many times did you tear the plain paper to demonstrate the process of a red blood
actions/questions cell getting smaller? Are you able to tear your paper infinitely more than ___ many times
to demonstrate the process? Remember, new cells continue to grow and old cells
continue to decay to ensure the normal circulation of our body.
Do you think this activity will still be suitable when x (the number of times a red blood cell
undergoes half-lives) gets really big? Recall in day 1’s lesson, we discussed our body is
developing and functioning all the time, so cell division is always happening to the
trillions of cells inside our body. In order to ensure regular circulation of our body, if new
cells continue to be produced, but we do not have infinitely many cells, what happens to
the old cells? What equation can represent this situation?
Student actions/ Students will think, “I think the proportion of paper formed after each tearing is shrinking
student thinking/ by ½ (multiplying 1/2 for repeated times). Since this is on a table representing a function,
assessment how can I write this out as an equation?” Students will be able to use repeated
multiplication by multiplying ½ x times where x stands for the times of half-life. Students
will finally be able to convert repeated multiplication of ½ to an exponential form as y =
(½)^x, and y represents the remaining proportion of red blood cells. For Part IV of the
lesson, I decided to revise the closure portion of Day 1/Day 2’s lesson. After the gallery
walk and when the class was having a discussion as a whole, we thought that the first
question we should ask was, “What patterns have you found between the number of
half-lives and the proportion of a group of red blood cells?” However, if I can teach this
lesson again, I will rather ask a group to share the observations they have written and
then I can ask what patterns they have found between the number of half-lives and
proportion of red blood cells. For example, if one group answers that they observed that
27
the graph is increasing on Day 1’s Lesson, then I would ask, “What patterns have you
found between the number of half-lives and the proportion of a group of red blood cells
that relates to your graph increasing?” Allowing students to share what they have written
during the activity will make it feel as if the poster in which they have produced is
relevant since it connects to a question asked by the teacher. Students will also
understand that this question relates to the activity, so they will know that they should
think about their graph and data.
Attachments
If you have electronic files (slides, worksheet, or tools) you are using with your lesson, please link them here.
● https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1MjoA8rgL53-a60frtyIfeLD3mjSpfjI2NVqX5B5onQs/
edit#slide=id.g2070578d45c_0_18 (Lesson Slides)
● https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xYq8eGDmvOQ80ScmFzEWDhluXBkZFZ3g/view?usp=sharing
(Exponential Decay Worksheet)
● https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XaaI50K6xtt9U1ltRAoITQNS50_2ctid/view?usp=sharing (Grid for
Activity)
● https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ei9sMvhkz5svFGbR8-_XYC7kZnPrV-D9/view?usp=sharing (Day 2 Exit
Ticket)
Part IV: Lesson Reflective Analysis

(Due 1 week after you have taught your lesson, no later than week 9)
REFLECTION- DUE 7 days after instruction
Complete this section after you have taught your lesson.

Cite differences between what you hoped to elicit and what your group actually did or did not accomplish
through talk. Differences are not based on superficial observations (“I ran out of time”) but to the way “the
students” thought/responded or the way the teacher (you) responded to situations; use student evidence
including student quotes and student work. Some of these differences might be positive, some might be
problematic. Both are helpful to mention.

Think about how ideas were elicited and treated during your lesson. How did using the discourse tool
help surface student initial thinking? Describe substantive changes you would make in how ideas were
elicited and treated. Descriptions of these changes should be based on how students responded to your
planned teachers moves—mention how students responded or did not respond as the basis for every
change you suggest.

Describe what you learned from your peer teach through your partner. These can be comments about
their treatment of ideas, about organizing talk, about their use of tools, etc.
28
Make 3 notes for your future self for the next lesson you will plan and write. What are 3 things that you
will plan to do? What is your rationale for these 3 notes? How do they tie in with your own experiences,
and what we know from research?
When students were on a gallery walk checking out other group’s posters, I hoped they would write other
observations they had noticed about the graph that the other group did not write as a statement on their
poster. For example, on Day 1, one group wrote that the graph is increasing as their observation and another
group wrote that the graph is increasing, particularly, each corresponding y-value is doubling. I was
expecting this group to write on the other poster that the graph is increasing since the y value is doubling
(from two cell divisions, we have 4 cells and from 3 cell divisions, we have 8 cells. the number of cells
produced doubled from 4 to 8). However, most of the students were writing comments like, “I agree with/like
your observation.” On the second page of Day 1’s activity where students had to write the number of cells
produced (the y-values) as just multiples of 2 to discover the exponential growth function, y=2^x. I saw that a
few students wrote numbers as 2 * another number that isn’t 2 instead of writing it as a repeated
multiplication of 2. For example, I saw that one student wrote 128 = 2*64 instead of writing it out as 128 =
2*2*2*2*2*2 and they did not fill out the power column of the worksheet.
I began my lesson by allowing students to answer a question that begins our discussion on cellular growth
and how this process can be mathematically expressed with an exponential equation. The question I asked
was, “What are our bodies made up of? What allows our body to grow over time and move every time?”
Once a student said cells, I asked how many and if they think we always had the same amount of cells. This
conversation brought students to cellular growth, particularly mitosis, and they were able to work on an
activity to discover an equation that relates to this. I tried to make sure that students had some time to think
before they share their answers, and I presented a short video on mitosis so they have a better
understanding of this concept. The group activity allowed students to share their understanding by allowing
them to observe patterns between the number of cellular divisions and the number of cells produced. On the
second day of my lesson, to see if students understand the directions I provided for the activity, I had the
class explain to me the directions to the activity before they were allowed to work together. After the activity,
students went on a gallery walk and through a class discussion, students had the chance to answer some
questions from Dian related to some noticings. This discussion brought students to discover how exponential
growth/decay functions look like and the equations that represent them.
I thought that my teaching partner, Dian, was hardworking and collaborative by suggesting ideas we can
implement into our phenomenon-based lesson. For example, we first thought that we can make our lesson
be based on COVID cases, but we realized that simple exponential functions cannot be used to express a
realistic number of COVID cases. She suggested the idea of implementing cellular division and cellular
decay to teach both exponential growth and decay in our two-day lesson. Since this lesson plan isn’t an
individual assignment but an assignment where collaboration is necessary, I like how Dian made sure to
verbally mention (or text) the ideas she had and how we can try connecting it to the mathematical concept of
exponential functions before we started formally writing in onto our lesson plan and powerpoint slides. When
it comes to organizing speaking in our lesson, Dian likes to ensure that students receive clear instructions
from the teachers before they have the chance to engage with an activity. For example, in our lesson, she
thought that we can portray student engagement after our introduction that connects to the phenomenon with
a paper folding/tearing activity that represents exponential growth/decay through the science concepts,
cellular growth/decay.
For the lesson I plan and write next quarter, after discussing with Dian, I want to create a summary/overview
of our lesson on a blank document before we start filling out the lesson plan template. When we were
working on this lesson plan, we were completing each part, which had a lot of writing, based on their due
dates. However, I remember getting overwhelmed with how these parts such as the research writing had to
be descriptive. To feel less stressed while writing, I thought that we should create a short overview of my
lesson before working on the research writing and lesson plan where we have to write descriptions on
29
leading our lesson and how students will be involved (this is like brainstorming for an essay in an English
class). I will also consider talking to my mentor teacher about my lesson plan more often next time. When we
first started working on our lesson, we didn’t really ask her for ideas/help and tried to figure things out on our
own/with feedback from Kris and Vanessa. Once it got closer to our teaching day, we finally asked our
mentor teacher to check out our lesson, powerpoint slides, and worksheets, and she suggested that we
should make exit tickets to assess students’ understanding. Since our mentor teacher knows the students
we observe the best, I think that it is essential to have her check our lesson plan several times. Lastly, I want
to let myself know that my writing and planning does not have to be perfect by the time each part is due
since I can edit my lesson plan whenever I want. Some portions of the lesson plan are written in paragraphs
like an essay, so that pressured me to think that my writing needs to be well-organized and have good
syntax.
Reflect and Revise

Based on students’ responses and the artifact you collected, how would you improve the lesson? Select and
revise one part of your lesson (the launch [phenomenon or essential question], activity, worksheet, exit
ticket, etc.) that can further help students make sense of the science ideas. Make changes on your original
document by using the “suggested mode” to indicate changes you have made.
Link your document here: Part III Closing is what I decided to revise.
● Based on the posters I have collected, when students were told to write observations on other
groups’ posters during the gallery walk, I hoped students would write more detailed comments that
relate to each groups’ statement. However, I saw that many students just wrote, “I agree/like this
group’s statement.” To improve my lesson, when I have students go on gallery walks and write
comments on other posters, I would provide them a word bank where they need to use at least one
word from it when commenting on other groups’ posters. If students write a comment such as “I like
your statement”, they need to explain what they like about this group’s statement and why. In
addition, the word bank will have terms that can be used to describe an exponential function such as
“increase, decrease, continuous, linear, and discrete”.
Supporting Readings
Student Funds of Knowledge, identity, and including in the curriculum
Math Focused
Student and Teacher Humanity at the Forefront: A Curation of Teaching Practices - Radical Pedagogy
Institute
Mathematics Education Through the Lens of Social Justice: Acknowledgment, Actions, and Accountability
Episode 02. Black Men Do Math: Identity & Agency with Dr. Robert Berry
NCTM Access, Power, Identity, and Healing in Mathematics.pdf
30
Lybrya Leveraging student identities to develop pedagogical fluency .pdf
Science Focused
Designing for a Rightful Presence as a Lens for Science Teacher Education Research
Strategies and resources for contextualizing the curriculum based on the funds of knowledge approach: a
literature review
Re-Engaging Students in Science: Issues of Assessment, Funds of Knowledge and Sites for Learning
Teaching Science With a Commitment to Community
The importance and role of phenomena
Math Focused
NCTM Math Modeling Gaimme.pdf
Integrating mathematical modeling in HS.pdf
making the most of modeling tasks.pdf
NCTM math modeling in hs curriculum.pdf
NCTM Math Modeling Structured Process.pdf
Science Focused
Making Everyday Phenomena Phenomenal: Using phenomena to promote equity in science instruction
Adapting Existing Curriculum for Equitable Learning Experiences
The role of phenomena and problems in science and STEM education: Traditional, contemporary, and future
approaches
Focusing Science and Engineering Learning on Justice-Centered Phenomena across PK-12
Using Local Phenomena to Communicate Climate Solutions
31
Appendix- Workflow Table
If you’re teaching in Week 5 here is your workflow:

Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6
(21 days in advance) (14 days in advance) (7 days in advance)
Part I Due Part II Due Part III Teach Part IV

● Research ● Research Writing:
Writing Role of N/A Debrief with Reflective
Phenomenon Mentor, Analysis
● Research Writing: Supervisor and
Explanatory Partner ● ❡1
Model
● Research Writing:
● ❡2
Evidence of ● ❡3
Student Learning ● ❡4
● Lesson Plan
Part I Due Part II Due Part III Due Revision
● Teaching ● Phenomenon & ● Eliciting Student
Context & Essential Ideas
Abstract Questions ● Overview of
● Knowledge, Big Activities,
Ideas Sequences (3-
● Common Core days)
Math Standards ● Day 1 Lesson
● Learning Planning, Body of
Objectives the Lesson,
Closure,
Attachments (ALL
Docs, slides, etc.)
● Day 2 Lesson
Planning, Body of
the Lesson,
Closure,
Attachments (ALL
Docs, slides, etc.)
● Day 3 (if needed)
Lesson Planning,
Body of the
Lesson, Closure,
Attachments (ALL
Docs, slides, etc.)
32
If you’re teaching in Week 6 or beyond here is your workflow:

Week 3 Week 4
Part I Due Part II Due

● Research Writing ● Research Writing: Role of Phenomenon
● Research Writing: Explanatory Model
● Research Writing: Evidence of Student Learning
Week 3 or 4 Week 4 or 5 Week 5 or 6 Week 6 or 7 Week 7 or 8

(21 days in advance) (14 days in advance) (7 days in advance) (7 days after lesson)
Part I Due Part II Due Part III Due Teach Part IV

● Teaching ● Phenomenon & ● Eliciting
Context & Essential Student Debrief with Reflective
Abstract Questions Ideas Mentor, Supervisor Analysis
● Knowledge, Big ● Overview of and Partner
Ideas Activities,
● ❡1
● Common Core Sequences
Math Standards (3-days)
● ❡2
● Learning ● Day 1 ● ❡3
Objectives Lesson ● ❡4
Planning, ● Lesson Plan
Body of the Revision
Lesson,
Closure,
Attachments
(ALL Docs,
slides, etc.)
● Day 2
Lesson
Planning,
Body of the
Lesson,
Closure,
Attachments
(ALL Docs,
slides, etc.)
● Day 3 (if
needed)
Lesson
Planning,
Body of the
Lesson,
Closure,
Attachments
(ALL Docs,
slides, etc.)
33

Ed143aw Math Field Teaching 2023

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Ed143aw Math Field Teaching 2023

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2022-23 CalTeach ED143AW/ED148/ED143BW

Math Field Teaching Plan and Reflective Analysis

● Appendix: Workflow Table- an aide for making sense of due dates

Notes in gray boxes are advice on writing the lesson plan.

Name Dian Tang Partner Erin Kim

Part I: Information about the Lesson

RESEARCH WRITING - Connecting Learning with Students - DUE Week 3

Paragraph 1 (between 150 and 250 words):

Paragraph 2 (between 175 and 200 words):

Paragraph 3/4 (between 200 and 350 words):

Lesson: Math I Chapter 8

● Grade level(s): (9, 10, 11,12)

ABSTRACT (~50-100 words per question) - DUE 21 Days Before Teach

A-SSE-1: Interpret expressions that represent a quantity in terms of its context

F-LE-5: Interpret the parameters in a linear or exponential function in terms of a context

F-BF-1:Write a function that describes a relationship between two quantities

SMP1: Make Sense of Problems and Persevere in Solving Them

Why does this phenomenon matter to my students?

Part II: Clarifying Your Goals for the Topic

RESEARCH WRITING - The Role of Phenomenon - DUE Week 4

Paragraph 1 (between 200 and 300 words):

Paragraph 2 (between 200 and 250 words):

PHENOMENON & ESSENTIAL QUESTION - DUE 14 days before instruction

Identifying a Real World Phenomenon

● Is the phenomenon/problem contextualized in a specific time and place? (possibly at a

● Does explaining this phenomenon involve explaining a process or mechanism or data?

● Is it possible for students to construct multiple plausible explanations about this

● Is the phenomenon/problem complex to explain (it’s “rich” in content)? Does the

● Is student identity considered to further develop a sense of mattering?

KNOWLEDGE: BIG IDEAS - DUE 14 Days Before Teach

LEARNING OBJECTIVES - DUE 14 days before instruction

RESEARCH WRITING - Mathematical Model - DUE Week 4

Paragraph 1 (between 175 and 200 words):

Paragraph 2 (between 175 and 200 words):

TEACHER’S MATHEMATICAL MODEL ABOUT THE ANCHORING PHENOMENON - DUE 14

● How does it happen? (processes or mechanism or data; before-during-after)

● Why does it happen? (unobservable ideas, underlying mechanism, driving forces)

RESEARCH WRITING - Evidence of Learning - DUE Week 4

Paragraph 1 (between 175 and 200 words):

EVIDENCE OF STUDENT UNDERSTANDING- DUE 14 days before instruction

Part III: Classroom Activities

ELICITING STUDENTS’ IDEAS- DUE 7 days before instruction

Goal: Making students’ thinking visible

Designing task, tools, and talk

● What goes on in completing the task that you propose?

Exponential growth function (day 1 lesson):

OVERVIEW OF ACTIVITIES SEQUENCES FOR 3 DAYS - DUE 7 days before instruction

Learning activities N/A

Learning objectives N/A

What students will N/A

What students will N/A

Assessment tasks N/A

DAY 1 LESSON PLANNING - DUE 7 days before instruction

Introduction (__10__ minutes )

Body of the Lesson (__40__ minutes )

Closure (__10__ minutes )

DAY 2 LESSON PLANNING - DUE 7 days before instruction

Introduction (_10_ minutes )

Body of the Lesson (_40 minutes )

Closure (__10_ minutes )

Part IV: Lesson Reflective Analysis

REFLECTION- DUE 7 days after instruction

Complete this section after you have taught your lesson.

Introduction (10 minutes )

Body of the Lesson (40 minutes )

Closure (10 minutes )