Math Literature Connection

Transcription

1 Math Literature Connection Grandfather Tang s Story: A Tale Told with Tangrams By: Ann Tompert, Illustrated by Robert Andrew Parker About the Book: Two competitive fox fairies go through rapid physical transformations until a hunter's arrow reminds them of their true friendship. This original tangram tale is framed by the loving relationship between a grandfather and granddaughter as they share the story under the shade of an old tree and culminates in a tangram of an old man and a girl likewise resting. Tangrams, ancient Chinese puzzles in which a square is cut into seven traditional pieces (each called a tan), are arranged into patterns used to help tell the story. Lesson Day 1: Materials: book Grandfather Tang s Story, small cardstock tangram pattern (one per student), large tangram pattern for demonstration, scissors, drawing paper Set the Purpose: Students will increase their spatial visualization skills while identifying and labeling examples of grade level appropriate geometry terms and concepts. 1. Read Grandfather Tang s Story making predictions about the next animal the foxes will turn themselves into in order to keep away from the other. Ask questions such as: What is your favorite tangram animal? Which tangram animals are easy to identify and which are not? If this story had a moral, what might it be? 2. Distribute one small tangram pattern for each student. Have students cut out the pattern carefully so they have the 7 tangram pieces. 3. Reread Grandfather Tang s Story stopping periodically for students to create the tangram animals with their set of tangrams. 4. Distribute drawing paper to students. Write the following geometry words and concepts on the board and spend a few minutes discussing each. Students may not be familiar with the term parallelogram, but it may be a helpful term when discussing the tans. quadrilateral congruent right angle line segment less than a right angle symmetry (line of symmetry) greater than a right angle reflection (mirror image) 5. Ask students to consider each tangram piece (tan) to identify which of the words on the list appear in one or more of the tans.

2 6. Students will trace their tans on the drawing paper and label examples of the geometry words or concepts. Examples are: 7. Have students debrief by doing a gallery walk or describing their work orally in small groups or whole group. 8. Label with each student s name and save the tangram pattern for tomorrow s lesson. Lesson Day 2: Materials: book Grandfather Tang s Story, cardstock tangram pattern (one per student), drawing paper Set the Purpose: Students will identify fractional relationships of tangram shapes to other tangram shapes as well as to the whole. Note that one tangram piece can stand for different fractions depending on what piece or pieces make up the whole. 1. Redistribute the tangram patterns from Lesson Day Begin the lesson by having students prove the relationship between tangram pieces. For instance the parallelogram, square and medium triangle all cover the same amount (have the same area) since each can be covered exactly by the two small triangles. Continue eliciting these relationships and record in a place that may be used as a reference during the rest of the lesson. You may wish to have additional large tangram pieces cut out ahead of time in order to visually record the relationships. 3. Review the concept of fractions by modeling an example for the students. One possible relationship is that one small triangle is half of the square. This can be recorded in the following manner:

3 Another fractional relationship is that the square is 1 2 of a large triangle. 4. Have students work with a partner to discover more fractional relationships. As each is found, it should be recorded on the drawing paper with the relationship labeled. 5. As a culminating activity, challenge the student pairs to find the fractional relationship each tangram piece is to the whole. For instance, the large triangle is one-fourth of the whole since 4 of the large triangles could cover the whole. What fraction of the whole are the other five pieces? (Answer: the small triangle is one-sixteenth of the whole tangram, while the square, medium triangle, and parallelogram are all one-eighth of the whole tangram)

4 Large Tangram Pattern

5 Small Tangram Pattern