If you take a look at the previous lesson, you'll see that it's kind of epic. Even with 75-minute periods like the ones I teach, this would be a lot to squeeze into one day. I wanted to share it like that because that's really how I plan. More than writing individual lessons, I think about the learning targets, and the series of activities - whole class, group, and individual - that will help students get there. I prepare these all as one "lesson," ready to teach, but usually take more than one day to get through everything.
I don't think I'm unique in this way, but just wanted to share because I think it works well. In particular, what I like about planning this way is that after each class meeting, I can reconsider how students are doing, and have time to adapt accordingly for the next day.
More generally, at the end of semester, I always find myself reflecting on all that I'd hoped to accomplish vs. what we actually got done. I reflect on that and how I use the time at the end of the semester in this video.
All of that is to say that today is a work period. As the semester winds down, most students will need time to finish the work of this unit. Some will want to dig back into older learning targets from the any of the first three units. Others are caught up with everything and loving it, and for them I have a few "extensions" drawn from some of the good stuff we didn't get to do.
I love these days: my class is an open workshop that runs itself, with students getting what they need from me, helping each other, and trying to finish strong. At any given moment, 25 kids might be working on a dozen different assignments. Online tools like Delta Math and Khan Academy help, but I also keep folders of old work available, and as I describe in the next section of this lesson, I have some extension ideas that are as simple as giving students a prompt and letting them run with it.
With many students finishing their work or mastering earlier learning targets, a few will be ready for some extensions. Keep in mind that kids who are extending what they know don't need many scaffolds -- they're the ones who have gotten everything done up to now. All it takes are a prompt or two, and kids can really run with the ideas. So as I noted in the previous section, I'd hoped to spend more time on expected value and to teach a few lessons about the binomial distribution when I was planning this course. Instead, I use the following approach to set students exploring these ideas independently as part of these differentiated days.
(Mostly) Independent Investigation of the Binomial Distribution
More on Expected Value