Evolutionary Medicine

Rationale 

According to William C. Overfelt (WCO) High School’s 2023 School Accountability Report Card, in the 2021-22 school year only 11% of students met or exceeded math standards; in 2022-23, only 9.25% of students met or exceeded these same standards (The report card details that “The “Percent Met or Exceeded” is calculated by taking the total number of students who met or exceeded the standard on the Smarter Balanced Summative Assessment plus the total number of students who met the standard (i.e., achieved Level 3-Alternate) on the CAAs divided by the total number of students who participated in both assessments.”).¹

The CAASP website details that over two thirds of WCO students scored Below Standard in Concepts & Procedures², meaning that “The student[s] do… not yet demonstrate the ability to explain and apply mathematical concepts or the ability to interpret and carry out mathematical procedures with ease and accuracy.”³ Furthermore, nearly 40% of students did not meet proficiency in Problem Solving and Modeling & Data Analysis⁴, meaning that “The student[s] do… not yet demonstrate the ability to solve a variety of mathematics problems by applying [their] knowledge of problem-solving skills and strategies[; t]he student[s] do… not yet demonstrate the ability to analyze real-world problems, or build and use mathematical models to interpret and solve problems.”⁵ Over 40% of students did not meet proficiency in Communicating Reasoning,⁶ meaning that “The student[s] do… not yet demonstrate the ability to put together valid arguments to support [their] own mathematical thinking or to critique the reasoning of others.”

My curriculum unit is intended to mitigate these statistics by encouraging students to establish their understanding of exponential functions through tangible, real-world examples of evolutionary biology and medicine.  I plan to incorporate these examples of exponential functions at the beginning of and throughout the unit, rather than at its culmination, so that they can serve as the foundation of students’ understanding of the difference between linear and exponential functions.

In my Math I classes in particular, I notice that students understand linear and exponential functions when introduced and discussed separately from one another; however, when asked to identify which of the two types of functions are representative of given graphs, word problems, and tables, students struggle. They have difficulty not only determining the mathematical equation that describes the given medium, but in recognizing the rate of growth or decay as well. Furthermore, they lack the confidence and mathematical vocabulary to justify their use of numbers and variables in place of real or possible situations.

My curriculum unit will try to bridge this gap of understanding by introducing students to exponential functions through instances of their occurrence in biology. Not only will this facilitate student success in working with exponential functions, both as word problems and as algebraic expressions, but this will further prepare students when asked to work with both linear and exponential functions as tables, graphs, and word problems after the planned unit is taught.