At the start of class I hand out the SCIENTIFIC NOTATION SPACE CHART and I ask students to work independently until they have completed the chart. I encourage them to work without a calculator. Once they are finished, I ask them to compare their answers and discuss any differing answers with their elbow partners to identify mistakes. As they do this, I walk around making sure students are on task as they apply the knowledge they acquired during this unit.
To complete this warmup, I project the chart on the whiteboard. I ask volunteers to write their answers in the boxes until the chart is completed.
In this section, I ask students to practice what they've learned in previous lessons using facts about the Sun. The Activity is organized in a Math Stations Format. The students travel around 8 stations in pairs or trios and solve the Sun Fact problem at each station.
Implementation:
To end this the lesson, I use the "So What’s Up With ??" closing strategy. I ask students to raise questions about something they either were unsure about or need clarification. This can be done orally or by asking students to write their questions on a note card. Since this is a five minute closure section, I will do it orally today.
As I respond to questions, I demonstrate the questions on the board and I make the needed clarifications for all to see.
If I have one or more students who master everything with respect to exponents, I ask students to research situations when it would not make sense to use scientific notation. I encourage these students to share their findings with the entire class.