Reflection on Assignment 3 

                                    The Beauty of Telling Stories through Tangrams      

When we (May and I) started this project we didn’t really have any idea except we knew that the tangram is an excellent puzzle for kids to play.  As we delved into the topic more, we found that the tangram actually has a very interesting history which can be traced back to the ancient China.  In addition, the tangram is also full of mathematical ideas which can be used in math classroom.  Due to its hands-on nature, tangram can be served as a perfect tool in teaching geometry in a classroom. 

The tangram was said to have roots in a set of furniture of the Song Dynasty, however, the earliest known printed reference to tangrams appears in a Chinese book dated 1813, which was probably during the reign of Jiaqing Emperor, according to Tian.  During the 19^th century, tangram was introduced to Europe and the North America through trading ships. Interestingly, another source said that the rearrangement puzzle roots can be traced back to the 3^rd century BC when Archimedes, the Greek mathematician designed a tangram like puzzle called Loculus Archimedis or Ostomachion.  The puzzle consists of 14 flat pieces of various shapes and the area of each piece is commensurate with the area of the square in the ratio 1:48. Isn’t that so fascinating to know that the history of mathematics from different continents have so many similarities.

            Tangram can be a really fun activity for students.  I can use tangram to teach ratios, fractions, areas, perimeters, and different geometric shapes.  The lovely part of tangram is that students can make animals, birds, houses, boats, mankind, and other geometric shapes. Like Tian said in her article, “give me a set of tangrams, I will reveal the image of the world with geometry” (Tian, 2012).  Since students can visualize all the artistic work they made, it provides a feeling of success and the hands-on experience will make the class time less boring and more engaging.  Another valuable part is that we can tell stories through tangrams as our presentation showed.  Not only we can integrate mathematical history into tangram story telling, we can also integrate Indigenous culture into it.  One thing I found really difficult was how to teach math but also teach Indigenous culture using numbers.  Although we can create a word problem with some Indigenous concepts, students hardly know the meaning and the history behind these concepts.  It seems to me that this type of integration of Indigenous teaching stays at a superficial level and there is no in-depth investigation for our students.  However, if we could use tangrams to tell the story of Indigenous people, not only we will deliver the mathematical concepts, but we are able to let students really learn the Indigenous culture and its history.  Story telling through tangrams is one of the most fascinating way to use in our classroom.

 

 

Tian, X.X. (2012). The art and mathematics of tangrams. Bridges, 553-556.