Creating and Implementing the Problem-Based Lesson

The problem-based lesson that I collaborated with my colleague Tracey Howse to create was another valuable experience in my quest to become a more effective Lead Technology Teacher. In reflection, I found it interesting that after 15 years of creating lessons and writing lesson plans, including problem-based lessons, I was "trippin'" (the only way to describe my feelings) on how difficult it was to decide on the concept and problem. Perhaps it was because I haven't had to do lesson planning on my own for over a year and it was hard for me to narrow down the scope. Also I find that I, and I believe a lot of teachers do this, make a bigger deal out of lessons when I know that I am going to be using technology. I'm trying to get over it, practice what I preach, and look at technology integration more "naturally" and not approach it like I have to have this huge grand lesson. But this has proven to be a challenge.

Tracey brought in the Scholastic Keys software that we used (we have a license at school) and we decided on the spreadsheet application. I love using and teaching Excel. Okay...so we used a scholastic key template about cookie dough which has students determine how many ingredients they would need to make a certain number of rice crispy cookies. Therein lies the problem. Users are able to type in information and the spreadsheet figures out the solution to the problem. In order to make the learning activity more relevant we augmented the template to require students to estimate how many cookies it would take to have one for each 3rd grader in our school. We used the names of the teachers in 3rd grade and provided actual numbers of students in the classroom. This is meeting math standards for third grade, requiring students to use the math operations of addition, and multiplication. It would be appropriate for teachers to use as students are learning that multiplication is repeated addition. Students would work as partners to first estimate, do the math, then enter the data and see how close they were in estimating and whether their math was correct. This is a strong introduction to spreadsheets and formulas.

To improve the learning experience I would add actual rice krispie treats to the mix, and also use examples of the actual ingredients (boxes of cereal, bags of marshmallows, boxes of butter) so the students have real-life references. To extend or differentiate the experience I would have students complete an extended response explaining how they solved the problem using their own minds and using the spreadsheet and how they see the connection between the two.