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STEM Lessons - Model Eliciting Activity
Have you ever had a cold or some other ailment that was just a nuisance to you? You tried this medication and that medication in order to treat your self-diagnosis. However, when you have exhausted all your avenues, you find yourself at the Physician's office: paying the co-pay, getting a prescription, paying more to fill the prescription with hopes of not experiencing any of the side effects associated with the medicine, and if that particular medicine doesn't work, you are back at the doctor's office and switched to another.
Well, Phalangelpodscribitis is a recently diagnosed ailment that will put a person's feet in motion. It isn't contagious but the treatment can be intense. In this lesson students will be presented with seven (7) medications that will help cure an individual of Phalangelpodscribitis. Students will be given the effectiveness of each medication, the cost to patients with and without insurance, and the possible side effects of each. Each team will be tasked with ranking these medications for a client in order to help him decide the pros and cons of the medications that should be used in treating Phalangelpodscribitis (PPS).
Each team will be responsible for recording the procedure they used to rank the medications and to calculate the expected cost for the client when two medications must be administered since the first will prove ineffective for treatment alone. The team's suggestion brings results and the patient is cured!!
Time has passed and Phalangelpodscribitis, currently known as PPS, has returned. Oh no! What will your team suggest when the doctor begins to discuss the patient's mortality rate as it is associated with the medication?
Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.
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Virtual Manipulatives
In this online activity, students burn a simulated forest and adjust the probability that the fire spreads from one tree to the other. This simulation also records data for each trial including the burn probability, where the fire started, the percent of trees burned, and how long the fire lasted. This activity allows students to explore the idea of chaos in a simulation of a realistic scenario. Supplemental materials, including background information about the topics covered, a description of how to use the application, and exploration questions for use with the java applet are linked to the applet.
Type: Virtual Manipulative
In this activity, students select one of three doors in an attempt to find a prize that is hidden behind one of them. After their first selection, one of the doors that doesn't have the prize behind it is revealed and the student has to decide whether to switch to the one remaining door or stay on the door of their first choice. This situation, referred to as the Monty Hall problem, was made famous on the show "Let's Make A Deal" with host Monty Hall. This activity allows students to explore the idea of conditional probability as well as unexpected probability. This activity includes supplemental materials, including background information about the topics covered, a description of how to use the application, and exploration questions for use with the java applet.
Type: Virtual Manipulative