Understanding how long it takes to cover distances
In the book a long walk to water there are a lot of different locations that Salva has to walk to. For my lesson it will be for a ninth to tenth grade class and they will be using the close reading technique. For my lesson I will have the students compute how long it took Salva to travel from one distance to the next.
First the teacher will have the students take the book home and read the entire book giving them a couple days to complete the task of reading the entire thing. The teacher will emphasize to the students that they need to practice the close reading technique. This will mean re-reading as much as possible to make sure they get all of the locations Salva traveled to. The teacher will ask them to write down all the places Salva traveled to on his journey to safety. The students will also be asked to get a mileage or a measurement of the distances as well. The students will have access to the computers and facilities of the school to help them complete the task.They will be shown how to use google maps in assisting them with finding distances. At the end of the week when the students have read the entire book and have their list of places and distances. The teacher will have there list on the board and inform the students whatever ones they don’t have to add them now. Then the teacher will give a lecture on the distance formula as well as how to compute distance traveled at a certain pace and how long that will take. The teacher will give the students a pace for each stop. As Salva went farther and farther he starts slowing down his pace is not as fast as it is at the beginning. After explaining the process in detail and taking any questions the teacher will let the students start working on their assignment. As the students work the teacher walks around the room checking for understanding.
The grand challenge that this pertains to is Understanding the mysteries of the world. In the United States students are never forced to look at how some people in other countries have it, it is a mystery to them. I think this gives them a better perspective on what Salva had to go through.
Montana Mathematics Content Standard F-IF.4: For a function that models a relationship between two quantities, interpret key features of graphs and tables in terms of quantities, and sketch graphs showing key features given a verbal description of the relationship. key features include: intercepts, intervals where the function is increasing, decreasing, positive, or negative; relative maximums and minimums; symmetries; end behaviors; and periodicity.
