Lesson: Roman Artifact Geometry

Source: Philadelphia World Heritage Tool Kit

Created by: Michelle Shanahan, St. Francis de Sales School

Subjects: Math

Grade Levels: 6-8

View or download this Lesson Plan.

Overview: Students will use Roman artifacts to further develop their understanding of plane figures and transformations. These cultural artifacts will represent mathematics in multiple ways. Teachers can use various artifacts, depending on what culture is the focus.

Objectives: Students will be able to determine and use lines of symmetry; investigate rotational symmetry, including degree of rotation; create and use representations to organize, record, and communicate mathematical ideas; use representations to model and interpret physical, social, and mathematical phenomena; and, find evidence of geometry in artifacts and apply that to everyday objects.

The Philadelphia World Heritage Tool Kit

This lesson is one of 29 lessons (K-12, all subjects) in the Philadelphia World Heritage Tool Kit. The goal of the Tool Kit is to help educators and their students develop a transnational analysis in their classrooms by using complex themes of world heritage as a framework to understand global regions across disciplines. These themes include shared architectural, cultural, economic, environmental, political, recreational, religious, and social heritage features.  Real teachers created these lessons and based their work on “best practices” that reflect student collaboration and the broad goals of young people in ways that support care and understanding of others who may be very different in background and history.