As in every field of study, the field of education does not escape the waves of innovations and trends. Every year there are either new mandates or a renewed emphasis placed in a specific area of the curriculum, research strategies, or methodology with the goal of improving students' learning outcomes. Through writing curriculum, I analyze, clarify, and synthesize these trends in a meaningful way in order to integrate all areas within the different demands placed on me as a teacher. Thus, the principal objective of this unit, "Mathematics Alive: Environment and Design of Human Habitats" is to create an interdisciplinary unit where I integrate the new district mandates and prepare my students to look at how mathematical concepts affect form and design of the structures that surround us. Throughout this unit, we study basic principles of geometry, functions of numbers, and visual representations.
The following lessons and concepts represent only part of the whole unit and are presented here as sample and suggested activities.This integrated unit will provide the elementary school teacher with a framework that closely matches district wide goals of literacy and numeracy in a Dual Language Program while exploring and studying the concepts of space, form, materials, and structures in architecture while exploring the above mentioned mathematical concepts and principals.