Grade: 6th Grade |
Subject Area: Mathematics |
Review Resources
I started by familiarizing myself with the PBS LearningMedia site and all of it's resources. It is a massive web-based collection of materials that is sorted by grade level and standards. I reviewed articles detailing the resource site as well as the Dunk Tank game I choose. All of the reviews that I read highly of the PBS platform and Dunk Tank series of games. I found the Dunk Tank game on fractions, decimals, and percentages to be particularly applicable for my lesson and student population. I played the game all the way through so that I knew what my students would be seeing and I could help troubleshoot during gameplay.
Prepare Resources
I created a ROPES Formatted lesson plan that outlined my lead up and execution of the gameplay in the classroom. I also created a Google Forms survey that would follow gameplay to ask the students about their experience with the game and their comfort level with the content of the unit. This was used as a formative assessment as well as an indicator of the appeal of the PBS game. I learned how to access the class's pre-existing Google Classroom page and created two scheduled posts with links to the web-based game and the Google Forms survey. The students were responsible for accessing their classroom page and clicking on the links which they have done in previous circumstances during the year. They are also familiar with Google Forms and have taken many tests and surveys using this tool.
Prepare the Environment
The students have one-to-one technology that they use on a daily basis so there was not too much preparation. I made sure that their laptops were all properly connected to the internet and fully charged the morning of the lesson. I made the decision for the students to complet the lesson and gameplay at their desks so as not to damage the laptops. I made sure that the projector and document camera were functioning before starting the guided notes section of the lesson. Finally, I made sure that the students had their laptops and earbuds already out on their desks at the start of the lesson so that they could flow seamlessly from instruction into gameplay.
Prepare the Learners
During the instructional part of the lesson, I worked through some fraction, decimal, and percent word problems that were similar to those the students would face in the game. I made sure that the students understood how I was solving the problems by talking through the steps aloud and doing several examples. Then I gave students very clear directions on how they would go to Google Classroom, click the link to the game, play the game, exit the game, go back to the google classroom and click on the survey link, and complete the survey. We discussed the expectation that they would work quietly at their desks with earbuds in order to not bother their classmates as they progressed individually through the game. I discussed the importance of the game and its problems that would be introduced as word problems because these are the real life circumstances in which they would need to make rational number conversions.
Provide the Learning Experience
Previous to this lesson, I had done a math unit on converting fractions, decimals, and percentages. This lesson came at the end of the unit, as it presented problems in word-problem form. I thought that word problems would be a good way to end the unit to combine all the conversion skills into some more real-life problems. The PBS Dunk Tank game is filled with word problems but also goes over the math behind the conversions which was good review for the students at the end of their unit. After doing some word problems as a class, the students were released on their own to start gameplay. They were given about 20 minutes to work through the game. Then the students were directed to complete the survey whether or not they got to the end of the game. According to the survey results, most of the students enjoyed playing the game and thought that it either gave them extra practice or helped correct some minor misconceptions about rational number conversions.