Predicting and Preventing a "Dry Date" in South Cental Texas

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Introduction

Show Anchor Video

Class Discussion about Water Consumption and Supply

What data is, where it comes from and how students can collect it.

CAT: Background Knowledge Probe

Talk about the methods students came up with on Monday and their effectiveness.

Field Trip to the Green belt to analyze the signs of a potential drought.

HW:  Paragraph summarizing findings from field trip.

Mean, Median, Mode of data.  How to interpret these  properties of data from graphical representation

CAT: Background Knowledge Probe

Bias and how to minimize its affect on data. (Difference between mean and median and how averaging data can reduce bias)

Quiz:  Mean, Median Mode.

Data Collection (Computer Lab)

Introduction to Internet Research

(Lesson 1)

Start Data Collection

Population

Rainfall/

Water Supply

Water Consumption

Wrap up.  Make sure students have data needed to make prediction.

CAT - Quiz:

Minute Paper

HW: Put data into tables and find the mean of data from the different sources.

Exponential Functions

(Parent Functions, Transformations)

Correlation and Standard Deviation

Types of data and the corresponding functions.

Linear Growth/

Relationship.  Introduction to exponential functions.

Describe dependent and independent quantities in functional relationships

Exponential Growth/

Relationship

The parent Function.

CAT - Quiz: Problem Recognition Tasks

Transformations of the parent function and how these transformations affect the look of the equation and the graph.

HW: working with parent functions and transformations

Correlation (r^2) of data sets and Introduction to Standard Deviation

HW:  Correlation

Standard Deviation of data.

Quiz:  Exponential data sets and how to recognize them.  Applying transformations to parent functions

Analyzing Data with  calculators and excel.

Break into Groups.  Have students combine data, find group mean, plot the data by hand and try to find a best fit line for their data (this should be nearly impossible)

Using a Graphing Calculator to plot data and find best fit line.

(Lesson 2)

Introduction on using excel

(Lesson 3)

Input data into excel spreadsheets and graph independently

Graph data (all three groups) against each other using excel.  Use this graph to predict dry date.

(Lesson 4)

CAT: One Sentence Summary

Wrap-Up & Assessments

Make sure that all groups have reasonable prediction dates and introduce final project (Writing letters to the community).  Groups discuss realistic ways members of the community can  conserve water.

Groups write their letters to their assigned group of the community.  (Leaders, Citizens)

Presentation of findings.

Conceptual Wrap up.  Talk about ways to conserve water in everyday life.  Talk about implications that the drought has for the students futures.

CAT: Group Work Evaluation