The process of preparing this lesson plan took a lot of time, effort, and organization.

After I created the lesson plan on paper I began to organize all the materials I would need
to teach it. I began by creating the warm-up activity. The warm-up was an inquiry activity,
so I needed to collect all the data necessary in order for students to answer the inquiry
question. I created my own inquiry packet that had a picture of every Colorado
congressional district map. Under each map was the following information: how much the
district was gerrymandered, the percentage points the district leans Republican or
Democrat, and the 2012 election results with the margin of victory. I found all of this
information on a variety of websites and compiled all of it together into one packet. Next I
needed to gather all of the materials for the main activity during the lesson. These
materials included: a Fort Collins high school boundary map, a blank map of Fort Collins,
the enrollment numbers for each high school in Fort Collins, a population density map of
Fort Collins, and the scenario students would be solving along with questions they needed
to answer to complete the activity. I needed one of each of these data sets or maps per
group, and had nine groups per class, so I printed 18 copies of all of the aforementioned
handouts. Then, I found a short TedTalk video to show during the lesson plan. My next
step was to create a PowerPoint to guide the lesson plan. Finally, I decided how the
students would be split up into groups. I created groups of four with each group having a
mixture of high and low performing students. I wrote the students names on sticky notes
and had them ready to be placed in the groups before class started. Everything for this
lesson plan had to be prepared ahead of time, but once all of this had been prepared the
lesson plan was complete and ready to be taught. Below is a list of all of the materials I
used during this lesson plan.

Materials Used:

Smart Board
PowerPoint
Inquiry Packet
Fort Collins high schools boundary map
Blank map of Fort Collins
High School enrollment numbers for FCHS, RMHS, FRHS, PHS
Fort Collins population density map
Scenario with questions to answer
TedTalk gerrymandering video
Sticky notes
White board
Markers

I changed the layout of the classroom for this lesson plan. Normally the desks are in
rows, but I moved the desks into groups of four. This lesson plan relied heavily on studentto-student interaction and I felt it would work best if students were arranged in groups.
Below is a sketch of the room arrangement for this lesson.