Designing Patterns - Teacher Resource: 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 Yup’ik cultural knowledge.

About the Series Math in a Cultural Context

This series is a supplemental math curriculum based on the traditional wisdom and practices of the Yup’ik people of southwest Alaska. The result of more than a decade of collaboration between math educators and Yup’ik 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. (2012-06-13)