Illuminations: Paper Pool

Paper Pool

Unit Overview

Lesson 1

Lesson 2

Lesson 3

Lesson 4

Lesson 5

Wrapping It Up

In the first four lessons of this unit, students investigated the Paper Pool game, collected data, identified patterns, and made predictions about the number of hits, the pocket in which the ball lands, and the path of travel. In this lesson, students finalize their work and write a report that summarizes all of their findings.

Learning Objectives

Students will:

Use the data that they collected during this unit to prepare a final report about the mathematics of the Paper Pool game

Materials

Paper Pool Project Description
Advanced Paper Pool Activity Sheet (optional)

Instructional Plan

This lesson is the final opportunity students will have to investigate the game of Paper Pool before summarizing their discoveries in a report.

Say, "You've learned a lot about the game of Paper Pool in the past few days. Today, you will collect all of your data and compile it into a final report."

Distribute the Paper Pool Project Description to all students. Review the requirements of the project with them, and answer any questions that students may have. Depending on how students have been working throughout this unit, you may want to have students submit reports individually or as a group.

Paper Pool Project Description

You may also want to take this opportunity to discuss, as a class, discoveries that students made. Allow them to share some of their insights. Another effective approach may be to join groups of students together and allow them to compare results.

The remainder of the class can be used by students to finalize their explorations and prepare their reports. As students work, circulate and observe students as they prepare their reports. Speak with them about what information they are planning to incorporate. Suggest other pieces that they should include, and answer any questions they may have about the report.

Assessment Options

Collect and evaluate the student reports. In particular, identify those reports that did an exceptionally good job of explaining student thinking, and share excerpts with the class. In addition, if a report highlighted a discovery that was only observed by a few students, be sure to share those observations with the class.

You may wish to distribute a Scoring Rubric to the class, to let them know how their reports will be evaluated. As an alternative, you might wish to create a rubric with your students. By allowing them to have input as to how their work will be assessed, students will be more likely to take ownership of the project.

Project Rubric

The Paper Pool game was used in a middle school classroom, and the reports were analyzed using the scoring rubric above. An analysis of two samples is given in the Scoring Samples document.

Scoring Samples

In lieu of—or perhaps in addition to—writing a report about their findings, students can complete the questions on the Advanced Paper Pool activity sheet.

Advanced Paper Pool Activity Sheet

NCTM Standards and Expectations

Algebra 6-8

Model and solve contextualized problems using various representations, such as graphs, tables, and equations.
Represent, analyze, and generalize a variety of patterns with tables, graphs, words, and, when possible, symbolic rules.

Data Analysis & Probability 6-8

Select, create, and use appropriate graphical representations of data, including histograms, box plots, and scatterplots.

References

Lappan, Glenda, James T. Fey, William M. Fitzgerald, Susan N. Friel, and Elizabeth Difanis Phillips. "Comparing and Scaling: Ratio, Proportion, and Percent," in Connected Mathematics Project. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2004.