Photo: Student work in math journal from immigration unit.My first social justice based mathematics unit that I taught with my 6th-7th grade students was focused on immigration. I chose immigration for a variety of reasons. First of all, I knew that it was a hot topic that we would be able to find information about on the internet. Secondly, it was an area my students knew little about and I wanted to open a window for them to see into another reality. Finally, I could find books to connect what I was doing in math to literature as well.
I decided that my unit would have a major project that the students worked through in small groups. For the immigration unit I decided to have students determine the cost of the proposed wall between the United States and Mexico-along the border. They would have to determine the appropriate building materials through research and the price for the materials. They would have to include cost of human labor, cost of any rentals of equipment, cost of materials, and tax. Their final project had to include both audio and visual components and clearly explain the materials, costs, and labor needed to build their version of the wall. The final project also had to include a thorough discussion of the students beliefs about whether the wall is just or not.
The project was scaffolded for student success. They were to work in small groups (3 students/group). In each group each student had a specific role. I will discuss the roles in more detail in a future post. The goal of having specific roles was to make sure that all students were engaged in the group process. Students were to meet with their groups and myself twice a week and they had specific due dates for specific steps they had to complete on the way to their final project.
During the unit I taught frequent mini-lessons to cover the math standards they needed to complete the project. These included lessons on unit conversions, geometry, decimals and fractions, and some more basic math reviews as needed.
1 comment:
The immigration unit that your students were working on included many strands of learning. The project itself sounds like a great learning experience that can help open up their minds to what is going on in the real world. I like how you put your students in groups and have given specific guidelines on what each member is to do. It'll be interesting to read your future posts.
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