Lesson Plan Title: The World’s Great Mathematicians
Concept: Digital Storytelling for Middle School Math
Standards Addressed:
4.3.8 A. Patterns
1. Recognize, describe, extend, and create patterns involving whole numbers, rational numbers, and integers.
. Descriptions using tables, verbal and symbolic rules, graphs, simple equations or expressions
. Finite and infinite sequences
. Arithmetic sequences (i.e., sequences generated by repeated addition of a fixed number, positive or negative)
. Geometric sequences (i.e., sequences generated by repeated multiplication by a fixed positive ratio, greater than 1 or less than 1)
. Generating sequences by using calculators to repeatedly apply a formula
4.5 C. Connections
1. Recognize recurring themes across mathematical domains (e.g., patterns in number, algebra, and geometry).
2. Use connections among mathematical ideas to explain concepts (e.g., two linear equations have a unique solution because the lines they represent intersect at a single point).
3. Recognize that mathematics is used in a variety of contexts outside of mathematics.
4. Apply mathematics in practical situations and in other disciplines.
5. Trace the development of mathematical concepts over time and across cultures (cf. world languages and social studies standards).
6. Understand how mathematical ideas interconnect and build on one another to produce a coherent whole.
4.5 F. Technology
1. Use technology to gather, analyze, and communicate mathematical information.
2. Use computer spreadsheets, software, and graphing utilities to organize and display quantitative information.
4. Use calculators as problem-solving tools (e.g., to explore patterns, to validate solutions).
5. Use computer software to make and verify conjectures about geometric objects.
Specific Goals & Objectives:
Students will be able to:
- Learn to use the Internet to do in depth and thoughtful research while analyzing and synthesizing a wide range of content;
- Develop communication skills by learning to ask questions, express opinions, construct narratives and write for an audience;
- Increase their computer skills using software that combines a variety of multimedia including: text, still images, audio, video and web publishing.
- Learn about the Mathematicians who changed the world.
Required Materials:
1. Laptop Computer Cart
2. Access to the World Wide Web
3. Digital Storytelling Tutorials and Software
Anticipatory Set (Lead-In): Play The Great Mathematician: Leonardo Pisano Fibonacci Digital Story on the SMART Board.
Procedures:
1. Create a Story Board on a Famous Mathematician. Examples include, but not limited to: Sir Isaac Newton, Leonhard Euler, Arthur Cayley, August Ferdinand Mobius, Blaise Pascal, Pythagoras of Samos, Ada Byron Lovelace, Benjamin Banneker, Archimedes, Rene Descartes, Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss, Euclid of Alexandria, and Charles Babbage.
2. The Story Board must have the following components: brief biography, well-known achievements, publications, and examples of two math problems and explain how to solve them step by step, how and where you find examples of the Mathematicians’ work in the real-world, and cite your resources.
3. Convert the Story Board into a Digital Story video: using power point converter, photo story or moviemaker.
4. Your end product should reflect my Digital Story The Great Mathematician: Leonardo Pisano Fibonacci.
Closure (Reflect Anticipatory Set):
Students will have learned to:
- Create Digital Storytelling as a presentation media;
- Generate interest, attention and motivation for the "digital generation" kids in our classrooms;
- Capitalize on the creative talents of your own students as they begin to research and tell stories of their own;
- Publish student work on the Internet for viewing and critiquing by others;
- Promote the accomplishment of cross-curricular academic standards and learning objectives.
Assessment Based on Objectives: See rubric attached.
(Used With Permission from LessonPlansPage.com)