Compound Events - Visual Displays of Sample Spaces

Opener:  As students enter the room, they will immediately pick up and begin working on the opener – Instructional Strategy - Process for openers.  This method of working and going over the opener lends itself to allow students to construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others, which is mathematical practice 3.  

Learning Target: After completion of the opener, I will address the day’s learning targets to the students.  In today’s lesson, the intended target is, “I can represent the sample space of a compound event using a table, organized list, or tree diagram.”  Students will jot the learning targets down in their agendas (our version of a student planner, there is a place to write the learning target for every day). 

Compound Events Explore Narrative: In this lesson, students will model (MP 4) probability through the creation of a sample space (MP 5) using a tree diagram.  Drawing tree diagrams can be difficult and cumbersome for some students, so it will be important they pay close attention to precision (MP 6).  Students will be asked to persevere with problems without my assistance (MP 1).

Summary Poster: To summarize the lesson, I am going to give each table one scenario to create a visual display for.  The table will work together to correctly identify all combinations in the sample space, and then answer any questions that were included in the scenario.  I do not normally have any issues with students contributing to their group; however, I will have duplicate copies of scenarios should I need to split up any groups or pull students to the side to do the task individually – as you never know the curve balls middle school students can throw!