Steve Keller 1

1. Context I am teaching in a high school of a city with a population of 40k-50k. There are about 20 students per class. The school district is 51% white, 40% black, 5% Hispanic, and 1.5% Asian. 7.6% are ELL, 13.1% are on an IEP, and 45% come from low income families. Graduation rates are 87.7% and dropout rates are 3.8%. 2. Unit of Study 2.a. Chapter 8: Special Triangles and Trigonometry. In this unit, students will learn the

Pythagorean Theorem and use it to find relationships in special right triangles such as 30, 60, 90 and 45, 45, 90. Students will learn to define the sine, cosine, and tangent ratios and use these trigonometric ratios and their inverses to solve for unknowns in right triangles. Students will learn to apply these ratios in real-life problems to solve for height and distance using angles of elevation and depression. Lastly, the students will be introduced to vectors by learning to describe them using speed and direction and solve problems that involve vector addition. 2.b. Essential Questions What conclusions have you made about the Pythagorean Theorem? How can our understanding of the Pythagorean Theorem affect our understanding of the world around us? What are trigonometric ratios? How are trigonometric ratios in triangle relationships helpful in solving problems in the real world?

Steve Keller 2

2.c. 1) Students should be able to find the missing angle/length of any given right triangle given two side lengths by applying either Pythagoreans Theorem or trigonometric ratios. (Remembering, Applying) 2) The students should be able to find the length of a missing leg of a right triangle by using the Pythagorean Theorem in a real life situation, and explain their answer. (Remembering, Understanding, Applying, Analyzing) 3) The student should be able to compute and diagram (on a reasonable scale: meaning they should be pointing in the right direction and the vectors have a correct ratio in correspondence to each other) vector addition, given the magnitude and direction of two vectors, and explain/justify their answer. (Remembering, Understand, Applying, Evaluate, Creating) 2.d) To meet these objectives I will be doing a combination of lecturing, working in groups,

and in class exercises. I plan on doing a lesson one day on Pythagoras Theorem and lesson the next day on trigonometric ratios. To supplement the second days lesson I will have the 5 problems below. To teach the Pythagorean Theorem I will do a combination of lecturing and inclass exercises. I will lecture over what the Pythagorean Theorem is, then give a couple examples and non-examples (trying to use it without a right angle), then give a proof of the theorem. For the second day I will basically give a lesson over SOH CAH TOA. We will go over a few in-class exercises as a class. I will give them a problem, they will work on it for a little bit by ones self, and then we will go through it together at the board. Both of these lessons meet the first learning objective. The second learning objective is covered in the assessment. I do not want to cover it before the assessment because I want to see how well they think critically. The third objective is never covered, this learning objective if for day number 4. The

Steve Keller 3

unit moves right into vectors after special right triangles (30/60/90 and 45/45/90) which would be covered in day number 3. At the conclusion of day 2s lesson (which I predict will take roughly half the class period) I will hand out my five Assessment During Instruction questions. I will have the students work alone on these five questions. I will tell the students that this is a Pop Quiz, but I will be grading this assessment but it will not count towards the students final grade. I will use this exclusively to see where the class is as a whole and where a few students (such as those with disabilities and IEPs) stand.

Steve Keller 4

3.A.a. Assessment During Instruction DIRECTIONS: Answer each item using what we have learned in the past two days about the Pythagorean Theorem and Trigonometric Ratios. Read the questions thoroughly and answer them accordingly. Show work!

1. Youre locked out of your house and the only open window is on the second floor, 25 feet above ground. You need to borrow a ladder from one of your neighbors. Theres a bush along the edge of the house, so youll have to place the ladder 10 feet from the house. How long does the ladder have to be (most ladders are measured in whole feet) to safely reach the window? Draw a diagram and show your work!

2. A square has a 40-cm diagonal. How long is each side of the square? Round your answer to the nearest tenth of a centimeter. Draw a diagram and show your work! (Hint: the diagonal of a square bisects the angle; a.k.a. splits the angle into two smaller, equal angles.)

3. Given the right triangle below, find the missing side ?. Show your work! a. 38.7mm b. 75.2mm c. 38.7mm d. 79.1mm

Steve Keller 5

4. You are 26m away from the Leaning Tower of Pisa and can sight the top of the tower at an angle of 65 o. Approximately, how tall is the Leaning Tower of Pisa? Show your work!

5. Find ALL missing side lengths of the following triangles. Round to the nearest hundredth. Check your solutions using Pythagoreans Theorem. You may show your work on the back side of the page.

Steve Keller 6

3.A.b. Analysis of Items Item 1: This item is directly linked to learning objective 2. This is a real-world application of the Pythagorean Theorem. I ask the students to draw a diagram and show their work because, although the students may not know it, a correctly drawn diagram explains why the correct answer is indeed correct. This problem is Remembering the Pythagorean Theorem, Understanding the usage of it, and Applying it. Item 2: This item requires a little bit of creativity. The item is linked to learning objective 1. The student knows one side, namely the hypotenuse, and with the hint, should be able to figure out two of the angles are 45 degrees. Therefore we have a side, an angle, and two missing sides. With the use of trigonometric ratios the student can Create the 45 degree angles, Apply the trigonometric ratios, and Understand the concept by explaining their work via a diagram. Item 3: This item is linked to learning objective 1 for the same reasons item 2 is linked to learning objective 1. This is a multiple choice item. I created the incorrect choices by calculating the answer with, what I think would be, the most common errors. This question will show whether the students know how to Apply SOH CAH TOA. Item 4: This item is exactly what learning objective 2 is. This question asks the students to approximate the height of the Leaning Tower of Pisa by only knowing the distance from one point to the base of the building and the angle by which one can see the top of the building. A diagram is given in this problem because the wording can be confusing on these types of problems. The diagram also alleviates the problem of some students not knowing what the Leaning Tower of Pisa is. This question is Applying the trigonometric ratios.

Steve Keller 7

Item 5: This item is kind of a summary of the lesson. The students have to differentiate between trigonometric ratios and the Pythagorean Theorem by Analyzing each triangle to figure you which method they have to Apply. The other items require a little more thought because 3 of the first 4 are word problems, which usually create more of an issue with students, while this problem is more drill practice. This question is not looking for in depth responses but rather just to see if the students have this skill down and can correctly use the Pythagorean Theorem and the trigonometric ratios. 3.A.c Rubric Item Points Number Available 1 3 Point Breakdown 1 point for drawing an accurate diagram 1 point for showing correct usage of the Pythagorean Theorem 1 point for either getting 26.9 or 27 as a final answer 1 point for an accurate diagram 1 point for showing correct usage of trigonometric ratios 1 point for finding every side is equal to 28.3cm. 1 point for showing correct usage of trigonometric ratios 1 point for circling b. 75.2mm 1.5 points for showing correct usage of trigonometric ratios 1.5 points for finding the a height between 55m and 56m tall. The correct answer is 55.75, but between the range 55m-56m is acceptable. 1 point for correctly finding V=5cm 1 point for correctly finding Q=80.47cm 1 point for correctly finding x=44.60cm 1 point for correctly finding Z=80.02mm 1 point for correctly finding Y=94.35mm 1 point for correctly finding ?=12mm .5 points for checking each set of answers on each triangle using the Pythagorean Theorem

3 4

2 3

3.A.d. I will be collecting the Pop Quiz at the end of the class period. Assuming everybody was in class the day the Pop Quiz is administered and the day before it, everyone will have an

Steve Keller 8

equal chance of getting a good assessment, therefore it is fair. Everything on the quiz was covered by the in-class exercises except problem 1. And problem 1 is simply a real-world application of the Pythagorean Theorem where the students will have to create the legs of the triangle on their own. This assessment is also valid because every problem falls under either learning objective one or learning objective two. The questions are not asking anything other than, Have you learned what I want you to know? All of the problems are straight forward and direct applications of the first two learning objectives. I will not know if this assessment is reliable until I grade it. Assuming I will be teaching more than one class I will be able to compare class averages to each other. If the class averages are close to each other I can infer the assessment is reliable. 3.B.a.b. I will conduct this assessment during the second half of day two in this two day spiel over Pythagoras Theorem and trigonometric ratios. This will be a Pop Quiz that will be worked on individually, and I will announce it during the beginning of class on the first day before we even start Pythagoras. Since it is a Pop Quiz at the end of class I will have the students turn in their work at the end of class and I will grade it afterwards using the rubric above. I do not plan on actually placing this Pop Quiz in the grade book though because I dont think assessments that do not allow for adequate preparation should be recorded. I want my students to be able to study more than a day in advance (even though most wont) for assessments that will be recorded into the grade book. This assessment will be used for my own knowledge so I can assess whether we need to spend more time on the subject or not; as well as their own knowledge for the same reason. The Pop Quiz covers the essentials of the two sections so it will give a good

Steve Keller 9

assessment of how well the class understands the subject material. I will allow all students to use calculators, which will be helpful for some of the special needs students as well. I have also bolded or italicized key points of the questions to help students with certain learning disorders grasp the question without having to read everything (because word problems can be lengthy sometimes). After I have graded the Pop Quiz I will return it to them (hopefully the next day) and I will, very quickly, do each problem at the board so everybody can see it done correctly. I estimate that without a lot of questions after each problem it would take approximately only ten minutes to do the quiz. While doing the problems at the board I will go over any of the misconceptions that I may have noticed during the grading process. 3.C. Performance Criteria a. Only partially grasping the information I am wanting to get across is knowing when to apply Pythagoras Theorem or trig ratios, but not knowing how to apply them. If a student can draw a correct diagram for 1, but cannot get the answer right or if a student cannot correctly answer 5a, then this student does not understand Pythagoras Theorem. I can safely say this because drawing the diagram is the hard part or 1, but after that both 1, 5a, and 5d are direct applications of the Pythagorean Theorem and learning objective 1. If a student does not correctly answer 3, 5b, and 5c then this student does not understand how to use trigonometric ratios (SOH CAH TOA). I ask the students to find all sides of the triangle given one side and one angle. This is a direct application of trigonometric ratios and learning objective 1. Therefore if the students do not answer these questions correctly, by either getting the sides wrong or just mixing the sides up, I have to assume there was a misconception somewhere and I will have to address it. I can address it by just going over the problems in class the next day, or if I believe the misconceptions are really bad, I can teach on the material another way for another day.

Steve Keller 10

3.C.b. As I noted above, if a good portion of the class, say roughly 25%, do not correctly answer 5a and 5d then I will have to re-address Pythagoras Theorem. If a good portion of the class does not correctly answer 3, 5b, and 5c then I will have to re-address trig ratios. I will have to do this because if either of these things happens then learning objective 1 has not been satisfied; therefore some adjustments have to be made. In order for me to say the class as a whole understands learning objective 1 I would look for over three fourths of the class to answer 3, 5b, and 5c correctly. If a good portion of the class does not answer 1, 2, and 4 correctly then learning objective 2 has not been satisfied. 1, 2, and 4 are real-world applications of the Pythagorean Theorem and trigonometric ratios. I do admit that these questions are harder than the others, so I would say that the class as a whole understands real-world applications if over three fourths of the class correctly answers two of the three (1, 2, and 4). I would say that in accordance to this subject material a student/class either get it or dont get it though. There is not medium ground of kind of get it. This is because the questions are direct applications of the Pythagorean Theorem and trig ratios. 3.D. Next Steps a. If I feel like most of my students meet the learning objectives I will move on to the next material. The next material will be vector addition which I have written a learning objective for it as well, learning objective 3. This assessment will be enough to move on to the next thing because I think the Pop Quiz covers the learning objectives very well (and I think the learning objectives cover the material very well). I stated above that if enough of the class does badly on the Pythagorean Theorem, or the trigonometric ratios, or both parts of the Pop Quiz then I will have to address the issues. I also said above that I think I would re-teach the lessons in different ways or from a different perspective. There are many ways to teach both lessons, so coming up

Steve Keller 11

with another lesson should not be terribly hard. To re-assess whether the students have grasped the learning objectives I would have another Pop Quiz of the exact same format (meaning similar questions). Once again I will use re-use this assessment strategy because I think it analyzes whether the students know how to apply trig ratios and the Pythagorean Theorem. 4. Self-Reflection By doing this assignment I have learned how much thought should go into most assessment items. Obviously, a teacher is not going to write down all of logistics that we did in this assignment, but a teacher should at least think about most of these things and have some answers to these questions because I think these assessment methods would be very effective in helping students learn. By mulling over all of these questions a teacher will be able to come up with appropriate questions to fulfill their learning objectives. Mulling over these questions will also allow a teacher to be prepared for what to do once a class succeeds, or fails, at learning the learning objectives. If I had more time there is nothing I would have changed in this assignment (except maybe have an English student read over everythingsorry for the poor grammar). I think one of the strong points of this project is how well I linked my assessment to my learning objectives. I think every one of my assessment questions are linked to one of the two learning objectives. I am not sure what needs to be improved though. My learning objectives might need to be improved. I believe I wrote them well, but I am not certain, I will know this once we receive our projects back. I believe what took me the longest to do was to actually write the assessment. Coming up with the learning objectives was fairly easy for me because I thought the learning objectives

Steve Keller 12

were quite obvious. The material covered only allows for so many possible learning objectives. But actually coming up with the problems that relate to the learning objectives took some thinking. It is this part of the assignment that was hardest. Once again though, I believe I overcame this obstacle by looking up some examples online and some projects I have done in C&I and came up with a fairly good assessment using the examples online as a guide to some of my questions. The most time consuming part of this assignment was what not what was hardest, but rather what required the most thought. This was all of the sections outside off the actual assessment itself. In particular, I thought 3.C. required the most thought. Being able to answer questions like those in 3.C. will come with time, practice, and experimentation though.