Appropriate Use of Technology? 2-3: Bagel Algebra

I selected the “Bagel Algebra” activity where a bagel company in Virginia displays a sign in their shop comparing their bagel prices to their competitor’s prices using a proportion. You show the students the sign and give them time to think about the sign and what the math being done tells them. After a few minutes, pair up students to talk about what the information means and try to get the pairs to agree on an answer. Then bring the whole class together to discuss what they have come up with. Lead a discussion about what the variable x stands for, what the purpose of the sign was, etc. so that the students fully understand the purpose of their sign and the logic behind it. The categories to describe the lesson plan that were used in this assignment were: learning objectives, materials, instructional plan, assessment options, extensions, teacher reflection, NCTM standards and expectations, and references. The teaching strategies used in this assignment are teaching through student exploration and analysis because the students are making logical conclusions based on the information given where the teacher is only leading a discussion that is the students mostly participate in. There is a lot of critical thinking in this lesson because the students are analyzing data and trying to make sense of it. The problem solving in this lesson mostly is used in the extension of this assignment where students are creating their own justification for how much a bagel should cost using proportions. I think that this lesson had all of the proper components, but you could add a few things to it to make it more interesting. If I were teaching this assignment, I would change a few things about it. The first thing I would change is talking to the students about the actual price of the other stores bagels. The lesson shows you how much their oppositions bagels should cost, but doesn’t show you their actual prices, so it just makes the student think the other place has cheaper bagels and the original place is dumb for putting the sign up because it would probably lead business to their competitor. The other thing that I would change is I would get students to come up with a reasonable weight for a bagel (the weight given is almost two pounds, which is insane) and do the problem over using the same information, but with a different weight and see if the problem changes at all. It would be a good chance for them to see how changing multiple variables makes the problem different.