Cultural Identity and Math Inquiry

During our migration inquiry the students have been thinking about how people maintain their cultural identity, even when they go to new places with different people, ideas, and customs.  We read "The Name Jar" where the main character, Unhei, migrated from Korea to America.  She had a Korea name stamp from her Grandma to help her remember who she is and where she came from.  We also read the story "The Lotus Seed" about a Vietnamese woman who kept a lotus seed in remembrance of the previous Emperor.  After migrating and having grandchildren she passed on her memories of her homeland to her grandchildren through stories of the lotus seed and flower.

The students were presented with the question, "Tomorrow you are leaving to live in Antarctica for ten years.  What one object would you bring with you to help remind of your culture, country and family and cheer you up when you get sad?  Here are the pictures of the students presenting their objects.

The students have also been working on math inquiries into measurement and many students are really excited to be working on measurement board games.  So much in fact, when it was lunch time today most people just kept on working on their projects!  Every one also was presented with the challenge to make a fence for their desk.  They could only take one trip (a few of them two) to the fence store to get the right amount of fence for three sides of their desk.  It turned out to be a challenging problem for most students since they had to apply critical thinking skills to their prior knowledge of measurement and addition!