Henry Tsay

EDUC 540

Week 3 Writing Piece: Lesson Plan

9th Grade Math (Problem Solving/Pre-Algebra/Algebra)

I.

Content and Standards: Pennsylvania CC.2.1.HS.F.4: Use units as a way to understand

problems and to guide the solution of multi-step problems. (A1.1.2.1.1, A1.1.2.1.2,
A1.1.2.1.3, A1.2.1.2.1, A1.2.1.2.2, A2.2.2.1.1, A2.2.2.1.2)

II.

Prerequisites: Students should be able to perform multiplication and division and understand
when it is appropriate to multiply or divide when working with units.

III.

Essential Questions: Do individual people burn calories at different rates? Do different

physical activities burn calories at different rates? How do you compare calories consumed to
time spent exercising? Does knowing the number of calories in a menu item affect your
decision to order and eat the menu item?

IV.

Instructional Objective: Students will use multiplication and division to convert exercise
rates (calories burned per pound of weight, per minute) into minutes of exercise, given a
persons weight in pounds and the number of calories needed to burn (typically in the form of
a food item and its calorie count). Students will perform these unit conversion calculations in
different ways, requiring them to understand operations of units in order to get the correct
answer. Students will personally design a menu of 10 fast food items listing the calorie count
and the number of minutes spent exercising to burn off the calories for themselves or a
celebrity or person of their choosing.

V.

Instructional Procedures:
a.

Discuss exercising and burning calories. Discuss that different people of different body
types and weights will burn a different amount of calories when performing the same
exercise for the same amount of time. Discuss how different exercises might burn
different amounts of calories per pound. Discuss what a calorie is and how it relates to
energy consumed or energy expended in the body. Discuss how many calories make a
pound.

b.

Discuss units of measure and rates. Discuss how to perform arithmetic operations with
units. Discuss how to divide and multiply units to manipulate quantities and rates into the
form or unit desired/investigated.

c.

Discuss the example persons on the Mathalicious worksheet and the different exercises
and rates of calorie burning listed on the worksheet. Walk students through the first
example problem on the worksheet; be available for questions on the remainder of the
worksheet.

Henry Tsay
EDUC 540
d.

Week 3 Writing Piece: Lesson Plan

Discuss personal and public health implications of requiring restaurants to list calorie
counts of menu items. Discuss personal anecdotes of utilizing published calorie counts.

e.

Tell the students to create their own menu of food items. Discuss what information is
normally seen on a restaurant menu. Explain that each student will create a menu listing
calories and exercise minutes rather than money. Have each student pick a person
(whether themselves, a friend or family member, or a celebrity) whose weight they either
know or can estimate for whom specifically to tailor this menu. Show them how to find
nutritional information on restaurant websites through Google.

VI.

Materials and Equipment: Mathalicious worksheet printouts for students; calculators and/or
Chromebooks for doing calculations, and Chromebooks for accessing Internet search engines.

VII.

Assessment/Evaluation: Students will demonstrate that they understand how to convert units
from food calories to calories burned per pound per minute to minutes of exercise through
successfully completing their own personalized menus. The minutes for each food should be
proportional to the number of calories for each food; having incorrect values of the minutes of
exercise for menu items would indicate that the student did not understand the objective or the
mathematics understanding for converting units.

VIII.

VII. Differentiation: Students have the choice of how to present their information (Google
Slides/Presentation, Google Docs, or paper submittal). For students who have difficulty
understanding the math concepts will be pulled aside for additional instruction/assistance.

IX.

Technology: Students will use their Chromebooks to access search engines like Google in
order to research nutritional information for fast food menu items and weight statistics for
celebrities. Students may use Google Docs/Slides to present their menus.

X.

Self-Assessment: Based on students questions and responses and project, how well did
students understand the multiplication and division and manipulation of units? Did the
discussion encourage them to think of the wider public health implications of the math
activity they were doing? Were they able and willing to creatively present their menus using
web-sourced multimedia and published information?