Picking Berries--Complete Kit (Math in a Cultural Context: Lessons Learned from Yup'ik Eskimo Elders)

In this module for grades two and three, students engage in a series of hands-on activities that help them explore data, graphic representation and linear measuring. Students gather data related to the berry harvest to build and analyze tables and graphs, and they learn to read thermometers and measure the length of their shadows. The culture and math of this module connect through an engaging story of a family gathering berries at the end of summer.

Includes one teacher resource, two student readers (Big John and Little Henry and Berry Picking), one coloring pages master, two posters, 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.