Flying to Ancient Egypt with Year 7

A funny thing happened on the way to starting the new school year with my Year 7(*) students - we ended up on the plane to Egypt.

We had spent our first lessons getting to know each other, looking at what the student survey showed us (two students have the same birthday, we have lots of dogs and cats, 3 left handers and 24% of class doesn't like maths) and working out our class rules. Now we were ready to start the official maths syllabus - exploring number systems. I was looking for a way to start the maths, while reinforcing our class formation ideas, and also helping reduce the anxieties of the 24%. And then it hit me as I waved goodbye to the class the other day saying "tomorrow we're going to Egypt!".  Here's how it turned out....

I lined the students up outside, telling them we were about to board an airplane to go to Egypt. A few students looked at me like I was a suffering from the heat.  "Nice straight lines please! Boarding is about to commence. When you go inside, check the board at the front for your seat allocation". This was only the second day with a seating plan - so it was nice reminder.

   

What the students saw when they came in - a map showing where to sit
(student names obscured)

As one student came in, she remarked "I thought I was going to Room 213 - not an airplane!". That's when I realised we were actually Qantas flight 213.  Several seats were empty - it's their first week at the school, so some were wandering lost outside in the playground. On impulse I leaned out the window and yelled to them "Calling all passengers to QF213 to Egypt" (praying the principal wouldn't walk by). The class got into the hang of the game quickly.  "Is that where we are going?" they said - pointing at the background image of an Egyptian ruined temple on the screen.  I don't quite know what made me do it, but I grabbed the hand sanitiser bottle from my desk and walked down the aisles - dispensing to every student - I apologised there would be no in-flight meals. Silly - but got us in the mood! A few students even told me to close the classroom door - otherwise the plane would crash.

"OK - so what do we need to go to Egypt?". A few suggestions were offered - and I nudged us to something I had prepared earlier:

We need a PASSPORT.

And our passport is our class rules - at which point I brought back the brainstorm diagram we had done the previous lesson - then overlaid with my formalised summary.

We need a GUIDE BOOK.

And our guidebook is our maths textbook. We took a diversion to issue textbooks.

Hmm - could go a long way exploring this metaphor. Most importantly : the book is not the country!

And we need a TRAVEL DIARY to record our journey. Well - that's our exercise book.

I used this segment to show an exemplar of good book work (Thanks to Simon Job)

And while we were doing all those preparations - our plane landed in Egypt! 

Then all we had to do was roll back the clock ..... 

Illustration (right) via http://www.eyelid.co.uk/ 

... and now we're ready to look at the wonderful world of hieroglyphs. We were making good progress, so we had time to look at the Rosetta Stone and how it was decoded (now that could be extended to a great discussion on mathematical problem solving!) - and then - just about the time one student cried out "But sir, this isn't maths!" - we discovered the novelty of the Egyptian numbering system.

via http://www.eyelid.co.uk/ 

The students spent the rest of the lesson working out Egyptian numbers - I encouraged them to copy out the number problems in hieroglyphs form for as long as they wanted.  Some got it faster than others - I asked students to help their neighbour work it out if they hadn't yet. Over the next ten minutes of working (mostly) quietly, several students remarked:

"Sir - this is very tiring writing out long long numbers like this" 

"This is silly - they don't care about the order of the numbers at all!" 

"This is like doing tally marks"

Which was exactly the point! Couldn't have said it better myself. We shared the findings with the whole class - and they will be the starting point for the next lesson - before we redirect flight QF213 to Ancient ROME!

I'm hoping the 24% in my class who don't like maths just maybe will give it another chance!

Resources:
Mark Millmores Discovering Ancient Egypt website is a treasure trove of resources. Includes maths puzzles and free wallpapers. Reasonably priced applications to generate maths worksheets using Ancient Egyptian numbers.

The 1893 paper by E.A.W. Budge "The Rosetta Stone" is an excellent explanation of the techniques used to decode Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.


(*) Year 7 students have just arrived from primary (elementary) school - it's their first week in the "big" school. Our Australian high school is like a combined middle and high school in the USA.

So what happens in the first week of maths class?

With the new school year in Australia rapidly approaching, and for me, my first year as a teacher, I've been considering just what we need to do in the first week. Every new teacher is told it's crucial to get things right, at the beginning - there is no second chance. Assembling ideas from my training and, most importantly, from many experienced teacher friends, I've put together a list of what I believe are 27 (!) distinct elements I need to cover with my students. You may be surprised just how few of these elements relate to actually learning maths.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByVkChxwrC4DLWZKdlpYVWt0Vm8/view?usp=sharing

The challenge of course is to program these elements without overwhelming the students (and the teacher) - and all the while helping build an atmosphere of trust, community and motivation to learn. I'll follow up in a few weeks with some feedback on what worked and what didn't.

A big thank you to the many maths teachers on the NSW Department of Education Yammer network who offered ideas and helped me work this out. Check out Maths Links if you're looking for topic related videos recommended by maths teachers.