The big day has finally arrived! Student groups presented the Number Systems they worked so diligently on. Each group had a task of creating two: one with a visual reference to quantity, another with a cultural one (dozen eggs represents 12, New Year – 1, bike 2, etc). Students were required to include numbers 1-100, zero, fractions, and operations of addition and subtraction. For two days, they labored in cultural and geographic isolation, mimicking civilizations separated by time and space. On the third day, a single student-researcher from each group visited only two other groups, reported back, and each group was allowed to borrow only one idea from the two visited groups. The results were fantastic: we had eight unique systems with highly individualized foundations for number and operations representations. I was deeply impressed by the creative range of references in the cultural number systems — anything from the modern to ancient cultures, philosophical concepts, human life span, pop-art, humor, natural world, and urban culture. The visual systems were not far behind: inventive use of shapes and lines, logical, easy to grasp, fast, compact, and beautiful in their simplicity, that expressed complexity with elegance of thought and design.

As if the Number Systems were not enough of an accomplishment, students reflected on their journey in the discovery of the origins of math in the Concept Maps. The Maps started on the first day with a simple thread split: Math – Invented – Discovered. Students added to it multiple times per day, using their Researcher’s Notebooks, the classroom book “The Story of Mathematics” by Anne Rooney, classroom discussions, cognitive puzzles, information from the excerpts from the video series on the origins of math where multiple researchers and university professors explained their points of view, and students’ Number Systems. Before our final researchers’ conference, students finished a gallery walk of all the completed Concept Maps and Number Systems and took notes in their Researcher’s Notebooks. Then we had our final Think Tank Talk answering the question: Has math been invented or discovered? Notably, each student gave a well-developed answer, supporting their point not only with the information learned in class but building upon it. For the closing curtain, Sam, our classroom assistant, performed “Fly Me to the Moon.” We packed, said our goodbyes, and made a happy final dismissal walk loaded with cool and educational fruits of our labor.

Last two questions of the week:

Grateful for my amazing Origins of Math students! Happy rest of the summer to everyone!