Students started the year by building and designing their own town. This multi-day problem solving problem took strategy, looking for patterns, reasoning and other mathematical thinking such as skip-counting, repeated addition and multiplication.
Problem #1 - You are an explorer in Alaska. With a team of sled dogs you have been able to see areas that no one else has seen before. One night at your campsite you find a few pieces of broken pottery that you think may be from an unknown ancient civilization. This is a major discovery! You need to get other researchers, historians, and explorers to come to the area to help you investigate. There is no where for your research team to live, so you must design a small town for them to live in. You must have space for exactly 60 families. All the buildings have to be the same size. You have been asked to find all the possible designs for the town.
Use the multi-link cubes to help you find all the possible ways to create housing for the 60 research families that will be exploring this new ancient civilization. Only one family can fit in each cube. You may stack cubes on top of each other to make tall buildings. Remember, for each possible town design each building must be the same height. The design must hold exactly 60 families. How can you make sure that you have found all the possible ways? The Governor of Alaska wants a report of ALL the possible solutions at the next meeting. You should record each design in your notebook using words, pictures, and numbers.
Students constructed a variety of towers and eventually figured out that there were 12 different possibilities to house all 60 families. They showed their work by drawing the towers, using numbers and writing to explain each combination in their math exploration journals.
The next step was to map your town and justify your design.
Problem #2 - The Governor of Alaska now wants your recommendation for the best possible design of the town. Remember, each building must be exactly the same height. Which building size do you think is the best? You should use the grid of the available land to map out your town. One box on the grid is the size of one multi-link cube. Don’t forget to include all the things that a town needs. Below are some suggestions from the families that will be coming to live in the town to help you do research.
Bill Goodrich
“I want to have a large backyard where my dog can run around.”
Ashley Stapleton
“I am a mom. I have a large family and I want my children to have lots of room to play outside. They also need a school that is safe to walk to each day.”
Tim Willard
“I want to live next to a large forest so that I can go hiking in the snow.”
Beth Weaver
"I like to go shopping, so I would like stores near the center of town to make it easier.
After you design your town, you will need to write a speech to justify the design to the Governor of Alaska. She will want to know why you chose the size and the location of your buildings. She will also want to know how well your town will work for families that will be moving to Alaska to investigate the ancient civilization. Make sure to include why your design is special and the best choice.
Students chose the best housing combination and designed the rest of their town. Then they wrote a speech to defend their map using rational thinking, evidence and problem solving.
We started the year with an author study and we chose Patricia Polacco. While reading these stories together we learned a lot about her family, neighbors and close friends because she wrote true stories about her ancestors from other countries. In each story there was an adventure and a message. She wanted the reader to learn something and we called that the BIG idea. We used her books to write about our own connections and questions. We are also going to be working on our own personal narratives, using this author as an inspiration. These books are displayed in Mrs. Laubscher's class and we have an author's wall to learn more about Patricia Polacco. After reading all four books, we decided to vote on our favorite. If you choose to read only one of these books, our favorite was The Butterfly. We really enjoyed this book because it was a true story about Patricia's great aunt. It also had a lot of history, adventure and reminded us how important our freedom is. The BIG idea was to keep family and friends safe. We hope that you enjoy Patricia Polacco's books as much as we do.
