Paper, Books and Math Workshop

There’s this overlap of paperfolding, bookmaking and math that’s been in my sights for sometime now. Next month The Center For Book Arts has me on the schedule to share my interest with educators.

It’s a natural fit: Fold a piece of paper in half a couple of times and you’ve got a book. There you have it, all this things I’ve been thinking about in one sentence.

 

Why math and book arts, you might ask? CBA asked me to propose a course for educators. Over the years I’ve taught classroom bookmaking dozens of times, though my focus during those years was literacy. In recent years it has occured to me, as I visit many schools and work with hundreds of different students each year, that teachers have loads of support for teaching literacy.

Teaching math, on the other hand, can be more challenging. In my desire to stay relevant, the hands-on projects I’ve been designing for classrooms had evolved towards supporting math curriculum and math thinking. And, oh yeah, I love this work.

Everyone folds paper, many people teach math, less people make books. Not too many people have a strong relationship with all three, Basically, I want to be teaching this workshop because otherwise I doubt it will exist.

Here’s what I know about offering a workshop for teachers:

• They want content that they can use on Monday.
• They do not have time to do special prep which requires more than the school copy machine.
• They don’t have easy access to special materials.
• They like having a handy resource folder.
• They want their students to be learn and be happy.

Equivalent Fractions

Here’s how I know about math:

• I play with math kind of obsessively….never got the memo about math being scary
• I went through K -12 math three times, once as a student, twice as a parent.

• I’ve been working in schools, discussing math projects with teachers and math coaches. We discuss standards and curriculum goals, and I talk to students about the math they are learning.
• I’ve been rather passionately working on deepening my math knowledge in workshops, conferences, and connecting with math educators through their writing and through the #MTbos and #iteachmath communities on twitter as @PaulaKreig

In this one-day PD workshop I plan on focusing on deepening connections, doing hands-on, classroom friendly projects that address areas of math that will help students create strong foundation for future learning.

For instance, we’ll be working with number lines in a way that is both interactive and which illuminates patterns. I’ve been working out ways of presenting number lines in ways which delight kids. The sounds of discovery that come from students when they start seeing what I show them has been one of the most beautiful sounds of my career with kids. I will also have hands-on ways of showing the number line that moves from natural numbers to negative numbers and beyond.

Since the number line stays with children, evolving from finger counting through the coordinate plane (and beyond) my focus here in not only to use the number line, but also to elevate it as an important tool that they have reason to embrace. One of my favorite responses, which informs my work with number lines, was from a first graders who told me that they looked at number lines earlier in the year and now they were done with that.

Click to enlarge for reading or printing

We’ll also be doing some work with perimeter and area. What frustrates me about students’ learning here is that they often mix up perimeter and area, not remembering which is which. One of the projects we’ll be making is a perimeter-pocket. We’ll make an origami pocket, which in itself is a wonderful lesson as is goes from being a square to a triangle to a trapezoid to a pentagon. But this perimeter pocket will have a ruler embedded in the structure and a string in the pocket to use to measure around things. Then there will be an area-rug book, with lift the flap peek-a-boo images hiding under the area rugs. Fun, easy, memorable!

I love that shapes are part of school curriculum at an early age. There are numerous projects I have in my toolbox that compose and decompose shapes.

I have some nice peek-a-boo projects that address the same composing and decomposing concept with numbers.

Symmetry will also get the attention that it’s due. Sure, we’ll talk about lines of symmetry by way of making pop-ups, but we’ll also look at the idea of symmetry as a it relates to equations, which can be seen as numerical symmetry. One of my exciting discoveries has been how naturally young kids grasp the idea of symmetry, and how well they they can connect it to equations.

 

A one hundred cents flower

We’ll even do some hands-on play with play money. I do these one-hundred cents designs with kids which gives then lots of practice with money, as well as practice counting by fives and tens and twenty-fives.

I could go on and on here, but I think you get the idea. And, actually, that’s part of my aim for the day, not just to present projects that can be immediately used by teachers in the classroom, but also that the idea of making the curriculum more hands on will inspire teachers to create their own simply made projects.

This is a rich, wide open inquiry into what we can do together to make math real.

The Center for Book Arts, NYC, Saturday, October 26

 

 

Endless Accordion

I’m once again revisiting accordions and number lines, because they are both  infinity fun. What I’ve attempted to do here is to create a classroom friendly accordion book whose pages are pockets which can contain changing content, in this case a variety of number lines.

What makes this project classroom friendly is that it is designed to be used with a ubiquitous material: standard sized, standard weight copy paper. It requires a few simple folds, and very few materials. I’ve made templates that can be printed out, but lacking the resource of a copy machine, this can all be easily constructed without my templates.

Endless accordion with pockets.

The accordion is made from units of full-size sheets of paper, folded, then attached together. For the basic number line I recommend using 6 papers, which will result in 12 pockets. Since zero through 10 needs 11 pockets, the extra pocket at the end conveniently implies “dot dot dot …. on and on …to be continued. ”

The shows where the fold lines occur.

A full sheet of 8.5″ x 11″ (or A4) is folded so it ends up looking like the picture below:

Two pockets from one sheet of paper

The tabs at the side are there to create an attachment surface for other the next pockets.

Attaching pockets together

The tabs of adjoining papers can be attached with glue, tape, sewing, paper fasteners, staples or paper clips. I ch0ose paper clips.

One piece of paper, folded, has room for four numbers

The cards with the numbers are also made from sheets of uncut, folded paper. They are folded so that they are just a bit narrower than the pockets.  Once they’ve been folded they can be glued (or taped etc) shut but I don’t bother doing this, as they seem to stay together just fine without gluing.

Counting by 10’s

One set of numbers can make four different number lines.

Counting by ones

I’m providing links to PDF’s. There’s a PDF for the pocket, which I recommend that you make 6 copies of. This template is in black and white only. I hand colored in the dividing lines.

As for the numbers, I have one full color PDF here, and one that has the black and white outlines of the numbers if you prefer to let have your students color in the numbers themselves. At the moment I only have files for paper measured in inches, but in the next day or two I will update with A4 versions as well.

template for pocket

PDF 8.5 x 11 for accordion pockets lines

Numbers in color

PDF 8.5 x 11 accordion number line, colored numbers

Number to color in yourselves

PDF  8.5 x 1 blank numbers number line for accordion pockets

If you’re interested I’ve posted something about my interest in the number line on my Google+ page https://goo.gl/ScI0nZ

I would love to hear from anyone who constructs this project with a class!

Hexagon-Flexagons: Post 2, Fractions

Except for the last picture, all of the images in this post exist on one hexagon-flexagon. In my last post I showed hexagon-flexagons that were about making designs with pencil, paper, and gouache. When I was making the design for this post I was thinking more about math.

Hesxagon-Flexagon divided into three rhombuses

Okay, now here I go,showcasing my hexagon-flexagon as way to illustrate fractions, rather than to be a kaleidoscopic toy.
The hexagon-flexagon above has been illustrated to be understood as thirds,showing that three thirds create a whole.
Now, this concept might be better understood if the parts were actually labeled.

Flexing the structure to reveal another design

I worried that labeling the parts could cause a problem, because, after flexing the structure, the design changes. I did a mock up to see what would happen, and this is what I got:

Fractioned parts, labeled

Not bad. I like this way of working with the hexagon-flexagon.

Hexagon-Flexagon, two trapezoid showing dividing the structure in half

One thing is really clear to me, and that is that I would love to work with a graphic designer who would add words and numbers that looks snazzier than my handwriting. Oh, and another thing that is clear is that labeling the hexagon as two halves doesn’t work well after it’s been flexed. (I’m not providing a picture here of how the broken up halves looks).

Six equilateral triangles dividing the hexagon-flexagon into sixths

This side of the hexagon-flexagon shows that six parts equal a whole. Ideally, I would label each of the blue triangles with their own “1/6′ fraction, then write equations all around the outside edges (such as 1/6 + 1/6 = 2/6 =1/3)

Flexed version of the previous image

I think that this is going to be a long-term project, perfecting these images with better text graphics. I like how the geometric patterns work out here. It’s just the labeling that I can’t get right.

So, everyone has heard students question why they have to learn math, particularly algebra and trig, as they don’t foresee ever using it. I have at least one good answer to that age-old question. The reason to master math is that it keeps a person’s options open. I recently spoke to the someone who was helping her 30ish-year single parent daughter with Algebra because it is required for a nursing degree. Today I spoke a woman who has gone back to school to get a degree is Public Health. She is struggling with her required economics course. My son needs a to complete two semesters of Calculus towards his Biology degree, which will qualify him to go on to Chiropractic studies. So, there you have it: learning math a keeps options open for the future.

Now here’s another way of decorating a hexagon-flexagon, and hey, it’s even seasonally correct, as it can easily pass for a six-sided snowflake.

Hexagon-Flexagon by Michele Gannon

Math and art together: always a great idea.