Lesson Plan Outline

Lindsay Pilong
A. Title of Lesson: Solving Rational Equations Day 3
B. Context of Lesson: Students will have learned how to solve rational equations the
week prior to this lesson and will have practiced this concept on friday of the prior week.
This lesson will take place on a wednesday, following a 4-day weekend and will help to
review both rational equations and expressions in preparation for their exam in 2 days
(Friday). Their homework was a review of both equations and expressions.
C. Learning Objectives and Assessment
Learning Objective

UKD
#

How will it be assessed?

Students will be able to solve rational

equations for the value of x (or another
variable)

D1

Observation during spoons and the exit

ticket

Students will know that when the

denominators are equal, the numerators are
equal as well.

K1

Observation during spoons and the exit

ticket

Students will know that the first step to

solving a rational equation is to find a
common denominator

K2

Exit ticket

Students will understand that when solving

rational equations, they are trying to find
all possible values the variable can have to
make the given equation true.

U1

Observation during spoons and exit

ticket.

Students will be able to add, subtract,

multiply and divide rational expressions.

D2

Observation during row activity and exit

ticket.

D. Related 2009 Virginia Standards of Learning:

AII.4 The students will solve algebraically,
c. Equations containing rational algebraic expressions.
A II.1 The student, given rational, radical, or polynomial expressions
will,
a. Add, subtract, multiply, divide, and simplify rational algebraic
expressions

E. Materials Needed
I will need the notecards with problems and answers for Spoons, The
row game activity sheet and the exit ticket printed out and copied.
F. Procedure
Time

10-20
min.
(10:15
)

Mathematical Tasks to be Used,

Teacher
Thoughts/Actions/Questions

Anticipated Student
Comments, Questions, Actions,
and Strategies

When students come in, I will ask

them to turn in their review and
grab a whiteboard. I will have a
problem on the board for them to
solve and Ill be walking around
to see how it goes, then Ill ask to
see everyones answers and we
will go over the problem. We will
do this for about 15-20 minutes
and I will get the problems from
the extra practice problems in
the textbook.

I anticipate students forgetting

how to solve rational
equations. They will have just
come back from a 4 day
weekend and their homework
was not on rational equations.
Hopefully this will ease them
back into solving equations. Im
sure I will answer questions
about finding a common
denominator and when we can
just solve the numerators
without the denominator.
I also anticipate students not
remembering anything about
extraneous solutions. I will
make sure we do a problem
with extraneous solutions so
we can talk about this before
we jump into an activity.

30-40
mins
(10:55
)

Then, I will have students move

the desks to be in 5 groups of 4
desks. I will tell the students
which group they will be in (I will
group students based on their
understanding as well as make
sure students that will distract
one another are in different
groups). I will then explain the
rules to the game we will play:
Spoons! (Math version)

Hopefully students will have

fun with this activity! They
should be working together to
find the answers to each
equation.
I anticipate some issues arising
when there are more than one
solution to a problem or when
there are extraneous solutions.
I made sure we had questions
of these types so they have

15
min.
(11:10
)

Each group will be handed 4

cards each with the same
problem on it (thus, every
student will have a card with the
same problem), they will work
together on the problems (each
MUST have the work for the
problem on their own paper).
Once they come to an answer,
ONE member from the group will
come to a table in the center
where 8 cards will be laying face
down. 4 of these cards will
contain the correct answer and 4
of these cards will contain an
incorrect answer, thus, if
everyone gets the correct
answer, one team will not get a
card with the right answer. Once
every group has chosen an
answer card, I will tell them the
correct answer and any team
that did not get that answer card
will receive an S (or P or O
depending on how many theyve
missed!). I will then ask one
student from a group that got the
answer correct to come work the
problem on the board and
explain what he/she did to get
the answer. Then I will collect the
cards and hand out the second
problem. This will continue until
theyve done all the problems
(there are 7). The team with the
fewest letters at the end wins!

more chances to practice them.

Then, I will have students stay in

these groups of 4 and with their
partner (whomever is sitting
directly in front of them), they
will work on the row game
worksheet on rational
expressions.

These kinds of problems the

students have been working on
for a while, they were on their
last test and was what their
review was over the weekend. I
hope students dont have too
many problems with these
problems, especially because

As students come to go over

the problem, I hope it will help
students see where they made
mistakes and how to avoid
those mistakes in the future.
If some students are still lost, I
may decide to give them some
more individualized help after
the game instead of them
doing the row game activity.

Row Game: Each student is given

one piece of paper, there are 6
problems on each side (problems
on each side are different) and
each side is labeled A or B.
Students will decide who in their
group is student A and who is
student B. They will work their
problems, each problem will have
the same answer as the problem
with the same number on the
other side. If both students get
the same answer, they move on,
if not, they must work together
to find who made the mistake
and what it was.
15 min Exit Ticket. The exit ticket is
(11:25 attached and will be used to
)
decide what students know and
can do vs. what we need to focus
on for review tomorrow so they
are ready for the test on friday.

they will be able to work

together to get matching
answers.
Some students may get
confused and try to solve them
but hopefully when they realize
there isnt an equal sign they
will revert back to
simplification. I expect students
may ask, when do we find
common denominators and
when can we just cross stuff
out? Hopefully after this
review, they will finally have
that straight!
Hopefully students will be
confident and be able to do all
4 of the problems. However, if
there are still issues, we can
address them and practice
those skills on the following
day.

G. Meeting The Needs of All Students:

When we go over questions from the review, we will be able to focus
on the things that the students need help with. Similarly to the previous two
days, when we play spoons, the students will see other students solve the
equations and be able to work together, so students can solve the equations
using the method that makes sense to them as well as learn from their
classmates. As students complete the row game activity, I will be walking
around and for students who need extra help, I will be able to assist them as
needed. Also, if there are students who are lost on solving rational equations,
I will give them some practice problems on equations to complete instead of
doing the row activity so that I can help them more in depth. The exit ticket
will allow me to see what the class needs review and practice on as a whole
as well as alert me to any students that are extraordinarily lost so that we
can address it the following day.