Designing Patterns - Kit: Exploring Shapes and Area (Math in a Cultural Context)

In this module designed for grades three to five, students design patterns to be used in a headdress or similar linear strip. They explore properties of shapes, lines of symmetry, and part-to-part and part-to-whole relationships. The module provides numerous opportunities for the teacher to extend and adapt this curriculum, from further explorations of fractions to Yupik cultural knowledge.

Includes one teacher resource, one student reader (Iluvaktuq and Paluqtalek), one DVD, and one CD-ROM.

About the Series Math in a Cultural Context

This series is a supplemental math curriculum based on the traditional wisdom and practices of the Yupik people of southwest Alaska. The result of more than a decade of collaboration between math educators and Yupik elders, these modules connect cultural knowledge to school mathematics. Students are challenged to communicate and think mathematically as they solve inquiry-oriented problems, which require creative, practical and analytical thinking. Classroom-based research strongly suggests that students engaged in this curriculum can develop deeper mathematical understandings than students who engage only with a procedure-oriented, paper-and-pencil curriculum.