Glenn Kleiman of the Education Development Center in Newton, Massachusetts, has been an integral part of the Seeing and Thinking Mathematically curriculum development project for middle school students. He shares several excellent activities built around themes related to architecture and construction in Chapter 16 of the 1995 NCTM Yearbook. According to Kleiman (1995), the new curriculum is built upon the belief that mathematics is central to human experience and is "organized around thematic units in which students engage in designing, building, planning, creating, playing, analyzing, deciding, experimenting, and communicating using mathematics" (p. 154).
The following chart (Kleiman, 1995) shows several examples from the project. It shows how thematic challenges from the lives of students are connected with mathematical investigations:
"Sample Thematic Representative Mathematical
Challenges: Investigations:
_______________________ ___________________________
Determine how to make a Explore the relationship
building more accessible between the angles and sides
to handicapped students. of a right triangle.
Determine which cereals Determine the cost for each
should be purchased serving and for other
for a school breakfast. other quantities.
Build a house from Represent three-dimensional
geometric shapes. Create shapes in two dimensions with
building plans using nets, orthogonal drawings,
pictures and written perspective drawings, and
instructions, so that verbal descriptions.
others will be able to
build the same house.
Determine whether a game Find all possible outcomes
of chance is fair for with tree diagrams and
all the participants. and outcome grids." (p. 154)
References