How is Math Like a Wildflower or a Flower Bed?

Area: Math

Grade Level: High School & Beyond, Middle School, Primary/Elementary School

Topics: math

Estimated Time Necessary: This activity takes about 20 minutes and is great to use as a warm-up before a math lesson. It also could be a beginning of the school year activity to gain insight into your students' perceptions and mindsets about mathematics.

Lesson Attachment: Untitled-document-2.pdf

Lesson Plan

Objectives:

Thinking about math philosophically.

This helps students think about math as more than computation.

This is a quick and easy activity to inspire your students to think about math in a different way. The forced metaphor of the wildflower and flower bed in relation to math requires students to think about mathematics philosophically and not only in terms of computation. This activity can be used as a warm-up activity before a math lesson. It also could be used at the beginning of the school year to learn more about your students as mathematicians and their thinking. Since philosophical thinking can be ignited for any age student, it is perfect for any grade level.

See the Lesson Attachment above for images to use for this activity.

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This lesson plan was created for PLATO by: Tracy Zalud, Oswego School District #308, IL and Aurora University, IL.

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

If you would like to change or adapt any of PLATO's work for public use, please feel free to contact us for permission at info@plato-philosophy.org.