Mosaic Math

I love reading about PBL in various classes. Here is a post about mosaic math:



He writes:

Here's what my students did....they were given a piece of large chart paper. Then they were given a ruler and had to decide if they were going to make their squares 1 in by 1 in, 1.5 inch by 1.5 inch, or 2 in by 2 in.

After they made that decision they went and got construction paper to begin cutting their squares to make a mosaic self portrait of themselves. This took QUITE a while because I was continually going around making sure they were actually measuring and making squares instead of a bunch of rectangles. It took two class days for each class to finish (which totals to about 2 hours); and some students had to have a working lunch or take it home to finish it.

So after everyone was done, on Thursday we did the math with it! First they had to write a fraction displaying how much of each color they used. Then they had to simplify those fractions....yes some of them had VERY large denominators (that we normally don't work with in 5th grade) so I let them use calculators when simplifying the fractions (hey, we use calculators as adults!).

After they wrote and simplified their fractions, then they had to determine the perimeter of their shape (depending on what measurement they chose to use at the beginning).

And after they determined the perimeter of their picture they had to determine the area of their shape (not counting the eyes, hair, or neck).

It was a lot of math, but it was really fun! And afterwards we got to display them in the hallway. Since my kids are now Minecraft addict they were all commenting about how much their people look like Minecraft characters, which I found pretty funny.

Via: http://nesloneyflipped.blogspot.ca/2013/04/archery-mosaics-and-xc-oh-my-week-27.html