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Direct Instruction Lesson Plan Template

Teachers: Subject:
Rowan Stewart Geometry
Common Core State Standards:
 G.G-GMD.A.1: Analyze and verify the formulas for the volume of a cylinder, pyramid, and cone.
 G.G-GMD.A.3: Use volume formulas for cylinders, pyramids, cones, and spheres to solve problems
utilizing real-world context.
 G.G-MG.A.1: Use geometric shapes, their measures, and their properties to describe objects utilizing real-
world context.
 G.G-MG.A.2: Apply concepts of density based on area and volume in modeling situations utilizing real-
world context.
Objective (Explicit):
 Students will be able to calculate the volume of various 3D figures and connect the real world applications
of the volume formulas through exploration with edible manipulatives.
Evidence of Mastery (Measurable):
 Include a copy of the lesson assessment.
 Provide exemplar student responses with the level of detail you expect to see.
 Assign value to each portion of the response.
Basic Recall: Students will be able to recall the volume formulas.
Level 1: Students will be able to identify which volume formula to use based on the given shape.
Level 2: Students will be able to calculate the volume of a given shape, given all dimensions and the
appropriate volume formula.
Level 4: Students will be able to model real world applications using volume formulas (volume of a round vase,
or air needed to fill a soccer ball, etc.)
Mastery: Students will be able to write their own real world problems using the volume formulas and applying
the knowledge they’ve gained in the lesson.
Sub-objectives, SWBAT (Sequenced from basic to complex):
 How will you review past learning and make connections to previous lessons?
 What skills and content are needed to ultimately master this lesson objective?
 How is this objective relevant to students, their lives, and/or the real world?
 Students will model real world situations with edible manipulatives to better understand the volume and
surface area formulas of various geometric shapes.
 Students will generalize from their tangible measurements to find the formulas of volume and surface area.
 Students will practice calculating volume and surface area of several geometric figures.
Key vocabulary: volume, cube, sphere, cone Materials: M&Ms, bell ringer worksheet, pencils
Opening (state objectives, connect to previous learning, and make relevant to real life)
 How will you activate student interest?
 How will you connect to past learning?
 How will you present the objective in an engaging and student-friendly way?
 How will you communicate its importance and make the content relevant to your students?
Students will each get a handful of M&M candies at the beginning of class. Remind them that they can’t eat
them yet (and that you’ll give them new M&Ms to eat, these have been used for several classes already).
M&Ms will help pique student interest. Connect to previous knowledge with questions about the area of figures
using the M&M candies. Provide students with bell ringer handout (with several shapes). Have them measure
each of the shapes with the M&Ms. They should measure the lengths of the sides and calculate area of the
rectangles using the formulas that we’ve used in the past and cover the area with M&Ms and count them (as
they would’ve done before learning the formulas). Do those options give the same answer? Now move to 3D
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figures. What happens when we take a cube instead of a square? Have students cut out and tape together the 3D
figures at the bottom of their sheet. If they find the height by stacking the M&Ms along the side of the cube,
what do they expect the volume to be, in terms of M&Ms? What is the actual volume? From these examples,
connect the content to real world by relating this to how much/many of x can fit into a given container. If we
had x number of M&Ms, would it fit into their cube? Why or why not? From there, state the objective of
calculating volumes and relating volume to area and side measurements (and pass out the clean M&Ms for
students to eat throughout class).

Teacher Will: Student Will:

 How will you model/explain/demonstrate all  What will students be doing to actively
knowledge/skills required of the objective? capture and process the new material?
 What types of visuals will you use?  How will students be engaged?
 How will you address misunderstandings or
common student errors?
 How will you check for understanding?
 How will you explain and model behavioral
expectations?
 Is there enough detail in this section so that
another person could teach it?
I will start with a few volume problems on the white Listen, take notes, and ask questions. Students will
board. I will calculate the volume of a cube, cone, be given ones blocks and have centimeter cutouts
pyramid, and sphere. or graph paper to use to see the volume of a cube
For ex. Volume of a cube in this example.
We’ll start with the volume of a cube. We’ve
calculated this using m&m’s, but some of you
noticed that the m&m’s were leaving some space in
Instructional Input

between. How can we calculate that in between

space? We’ll start with a square. Let’s take a 2cm x
2cm square (go ahead and draw that onto your
graph paper). What’s the area of that square? 4cm2
Good. Now what if we wanted to add some height to
that square? Using the centimeter blocks now It’s a perfect square on every side.
instead of your graph paper, what does a 2cm x 2cm
x 2cm cube look like?
How many of those cubes did we need to make that
larger cube? 8
Now that we have cubes instead of squares, is our
volume going to be cm2? No
What will it be instead?
And here’s that volume formula for a cube: cm3
b x w x h = v. Does everyone see how we used the
base, width, and height to get our volume? yes
Good. Now we’ll do the same for a cone.
Repeat a similar process for the other three figures.
Note that we can’t always use centimeter squares,
since our pyramids, cones, and spheres aren’t perfect
squares on all sides. Introduce formulas for these
three 3D figures. Review the four given formulas at
the end of the direct instruction and ask for
questions. Ask questions.
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Questions
 Clarifying
o What is the volume formula for a cube?
 simple recall
o What is the volume formula for a cone?
 simple recall
 Convergent thinking
o What measurements go into the volume formula of a sphere?
 asks for information needed in a formula, student has to remember the formula and
figure out what information they need from the physical shape to calculate the area
o What characteristics of a cone do we need to know when calculating the volume?
 same as above
 Cueing
o How would you rephrase the meaning of volume?
 asks student to come up with an alternative meaning; helps them gain a deeper
understanding while helping another student who may not understand the way it
was taught
o How would you summarize the value of the m&m activity?
 asks students to summarize the value of the warm-up; they have to connect what
they learned in the warm up to the actual math
 Divergent thinking
o How is the volume formula of a cube related to the area formula of a square?
 connection to previous knowledge
o What is another strategy you could use to find the volume of a cube?
 asks student to come up with an alternative method to solve the problem; helps
them gain a deeper understanding while helping another student who may not
understand the way it was taught
 Evaluative (take a position/stance)
o Why is the volume formula useful?
 asks student for a real-world application of what they’re learning
 Probing
o Write a real-world problem in which you need to calculate a volume.
 asks students to apply what they’ve learned to create their own problem
o How does the volume of a square prism with sides of 3m and a height of 1m compare to the
area of a square with sides of 3m?
 gives students something to think about; it’s impossible to compare the two, but
students think they are the same because they have the same number.
These questions are for the Direct Instruction, the Guided Practice, and the Independent Practice
portions. I’m not sure where I want to ask which questions yet.
Differentiation Strategy
 What accommodations/modifications will you include for specific students?
 Do you anticipate any students who will need an additional challenge?

Students in the classroom fall at a variety of understanding levels when it comes to mathematics. Students
are also coming from different parts of the city and different family situations and have varying
dedications to math and school in general. They also might not have someone at home who is able to help
with homework. Because of this, my goal is to keep students engaged with a fun opening activity and
minimize homework so that they are able to complete the majority of their work in class with my support.
The area in which the school resides isn’t the best and contains primarily apartment housing (mostly for
college students) and very few single-family homes. This means that the students coming to school are
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likely traveling far to get to school every morning. Again, this reinforces my decision to make an extra
effort to keep students engaged throughout the lesson so that they don’t have much to do outside of
school. To vary the lesson based on students’ understanding of the material so far, I plan to do the
following: Based on where students fall during the m&m’s activity, I will place them into groups for the
direct instruction. During this time, I will take breaks so that they may ask any questions that they have
about the material, either of me or of their classmates. Students who are having a harder time with the
material will be grouped with students who seemed, based on the m&m’s activity to have a better
understanding. I will also use whiteboard check for understanding questions to again, get an idea of where
students fall. If a student has demonstrated from the first two portions of the class that they have a very
good understanding of the material, I will present them with additional problems that give a challenge (I
will have them complete the first couple of the problem set given to the whole class, and then hand out a
tougher problem set, with shapes created out of multiple shapes, i.e. the volume of air in a box containing
a soccer ball). This way, the students will still be exposed to the same problems but will be given a more
difficult set rather than more of the same problems.
Teacher Will: Student Will:
 How will you ensure that all students have  How will students practice all
multiple opportunities to practice new content knowledge/skills required of the objective,
and skills? with your support, such that they continue
 What types of questions can you ask students to internalize the sub-objectives?
as you are observing them practice?  How will students be engaged?
 How/when will you check for understanding?  How will you elicit student-to-student
 How will you provide guidance to all interaction?
students as they practice?  How are students practicing in ways that
 How will you explain and model behavioral align to independent practice?
expectations?
 Is there enough detail in this section so that
another person could facilitate this practice?
I will do a few volume problems on the white board, Students will answer the following questions:
asking students to help me with intermediate steps:
For ex. Volume of a cube with sides of 3m
Guided Practice

I’ll draw a picture on the board of the cube.

What shape is the base of this figure?
If the base is a square, what 3D shape is this? Square
To calculate the volume of a cube, what Cube
measurements do we need? The length of the sides
The measure of each of the sides is 3m. Now what do
we know is the area of the base? 9m2
And if we multiply that times the height?
27m3
We’ll also go over a pyramid, cone, and sphere
before moving into individual practice.
Questions

See above.

Differentiation Strategy
 What accommodations/modifications will you include for specific students?
 Do you anticipate any students who will need an additional challenge?
 How can you utilize grouping strategies?
Through the guided practice, I will make an effort to use a variety of question types to ensure that all
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students are answering. I will sometimes call on individual students, at first students who seem like they
have a good understanding of the material, and later students who maybe seem to be struggling a little
more. I will also use personal whiteboards to get feedback from students about their answers, so that I can
get information from the whole class on particular questions. Finally, I will embed questions in a
PearDeck or NearPod presentation so that I can see students’ process in answering the question and am
able to access that data later during their individual practice so that I can better guide students.
Teacher Will: Student Will:
 How will you plan to coach and correct during  How will students independently practice the
this practice? knowledge and skills required by the
 How will you provide opportunities for objective?
remediation and extension?  How will students be engaged?
 How will you clearly state and model academic  How are students practicing in ways that align
and behavioral expectations? to assessment?
 Did you provide enough detail so that another  How are students using self-assessment to
person could facilitate the practice?
guide their own learning?
 How are you supporting students giving
feedback to one another?
Independent Practice

I will have students take out the 3D figures that they Students will calculate the volumes of the figures
were working with in the warm up activity. I will ask they used in the warm-up activity. They will then
them to calculate the volumes of those 3D figures compare those volumes to the volumes that they
(without m&m’s) and compare that to the volumes got with the m&m’s.
they counted with the m&m’s. I will walk around
and help students who are struggling with the
formulas.

Differentiation Strategy
 What accommodations/modifications will you include for specific students?
 Do you anticipate any students who will need an additional challenge?
As I mentioned above, students who are performing above average throughout the class (in their responses
to questions, both oral and electronic) will be given a more difficult problem set once they’ve completed
the m&m’s calculations activity. Students will be grouped via their understanding of the material. Students
who have a good understanding will be seated together to complete the m&m activity and the worksheet
while students who don’t have a good understanding are seated in another group so that I can more easily
access them for questions. Although this isn’t always the best seating arrangement, I believe that since we
spent the earlier part of the lesson in mixed groups, this will ultimately be more beneficial for the students.
Closing/Student Reflection/Real-life connections:
 How will students summarize and state the significance of what they learned?
 Why will students be engaged?

We will, as a class, review the findings from the m&m activity and compare them to the calculated volumes of
the figures. To close, students will complete an exit ticket with one thing that they were still confused about
when it comes to volumes or a breakthrough that they had in understanding volumes. As students prepare to
leave class, hand out mini bags of m&m’s.