1st Edition

A Mathematical Mystery Tour Higher-Thinking Math Tasks (Grades 5-12)

By Mark Wahl Copyright 1988
    268 Pages
    by Prufrock Press

    A Mathematical Mystery Tour has been used by thousands of students and has inspired adults to greater appreciation of the secret number language of nature. It is multidisciplinary, visual, and hands-on, practicing skills while also requiring deep math thinking. The activities are reproducible and each is accompanied with informational teacher pages giving answers, historical notes, teacher suggestions, and activity extensions.

    Let this geographically alive Mystery Tour integrate math with art, science, philosophy, history, social studies, and language arts. The use of the calculator, geometric construction, metric measurement, problem solving, formulating results, building models and making inferences is woven throughout the book.

    Each book purchase includes a link to a downloadable student newspaper, the Mathematical Mystery Tour Guide, coordinated with the book content. It is capable of being broken up into various assignments and handed out as print or sent whole electronically to each student. It is filled with games, riddles, dramatic historical information, crosswords, provocative questions, and additional math thought activities.

    Orientation for the teacher Introduction to the student Unit I: Living things count The Pinecone Numbers The Remainder Trick, The Triples Trick Coloring Sunflower Spirals Home Projects: Daisies, Pinecones, And Pineapples Leonardo's Rabbits The Big Map Of Your Mystery Tour Optional Activity 1: The Number Secret Of The Bees Unit II: The Dance of the Numbers The Fibonacci Parade A Fibonacci Game Playing The Patterns Some Fancy Quick Tricks Using The Sieve Of Eratosthenes On Our Fibonaccis A Look At The Territory Learning Inventory Optional Activity 2: A Fibonacci Machine And Computer Programs Unit III: Finding the Gold Introducing Ratios The Greeks And Their Golden Ratio Golden Faces The Golden Rectangle A Golden Rectangle Puzzle The Fibonacci Numbers Strike Again! Graph Of Fibonacci Ratios Close-Up Graph Of Fibonacci Ratios The Fibonaccis, The Golden Ratio, And Some Calculator Tips A Look At The Territory Learning Inventory Unit IV: mathematical artforms Supernova: The Explosion Of Stars From The Star Explosion To A Seashell Plato's Beloved Polyhedra How To Make Big Jewels The Gold In The Jewels A Look At The Territory Learning Inventory Unit V: Geometry, the pyramid, and the moon Packing For Egypt And A Moon Trip Finding The Circle Number Building And Exploring A Great Pyramid Finding The Gold In The Pyramid And Now The Moon ..The Golden Pyramid Payoff Moon's Eye View Of Our Mystery Tour Some Tasty Earth-Moon Tidbits A Look At The Territory Learning Inventory Optional Activity 3: Golden Ratio Tricks A Final Look At The Map: The Map Game Answer key to questions from the student tour guide newspaper

    Biography

    Mark Wahl is a nationally known mathematics learning specialist and author. He has evolved his graduate training in pure mathematics and math education into three decades of teaching, development of unusual math pedagogy, and reform of curriculum in all the grade levels. His specialties include creative strategies of math instruction, the psychology of math anxiety, cross-curricular activities with math, and tapping the multiple intelligences for learning. Located near Seattle, he is currently director of Mark Wahl Learning Services and executive editor of LivnLern Press, both enterprises dedicated to unblocking and accelerating math skill development in youths and adults.