Studying Graphing and Culture

We've been busy these last couple of weeks.

We've begun our mathematics studies with data and graphs and so we needed to collect some real data to work with. One of the ways students did that was to get busy and measure things about themselves -- things like the circumference of their heads and the span of their arms for instance. They then took this data and used it to make a whole series of different graphs which were presented to the class. That same data will be used again in a few days when we consider measures of central tendency as we calculate mean, median, mode, and range. Look:

Studying culture began, for us, with a look at the "family" culture that we all come from. So, students brought in special items or stories or traditions or timelines from their families to share with the class. This gave us a sense of how our own "culture" has been passed on to each of us from parents and grandparents and great grandparents. In sharing, we came to appreciate the diversity of our community and to also understand some of the things that we share in common. We saw special quilts and baptismal gowns. We heard the histories of families descended from artists and kings and warriors. We got to listen to a taped interview with a grandparent and we saw wonderful old newspaper articles and photographs and cookbooks -- just to mention a few of the treasured gifts that were shared during this first month. We even learned about the Tucker Automobile and the radio made especially for it. A few of the moments that were shared in our classroom: