Math and History

Interdisciplinary
Literacy Lesson
-Megan Rice and Maria Ghatine

Introduction/Overview
This is an inquiry-based lesson that students will benefit from to understand that both the
ancient and modern worlds use architecture to portray the progress and innovation in their
societies. This lesson is aligned to common standards for high school students. It provides a
lesson for each day and resources for the students to use.

Importance:
When societies thrive, monuments are built. It goes from just trying to survive to express the
greatness of their civilization and culture via any medium available. The outcome is the glorious
monuments we see throughout history. These monuments were mechanical and mathematical
marvels for the time. By leaving behind these monuments, these societies have proven to the
world their achievements and value as a culture. To this day, societies study, appreciate, and try
to understand how these monuments were built. In the present world, countries compete to see
who can have the most innovative and impressive pieces of architecture. Architecture is closely
related to a societies’ perspective of value, which is why we want our students to study and
understand its impact on their daily lives.

By completing this lesson students will be able to understand the importance of the historical,
mathematical significance that goes into architecture. When they walk down the street students
will start to question the world around them and why buildings are the way they are. Is it
function, religion, beauty, or material available? What we see in all has meaning, we just have to
know how to look. This is the goal of looking back at the 7 ancient wonders. Knowing how those
building and monuments affected their civilizations can help us understand how our buildings
impact our civilization.
Compare and Contrast an ancient wonder to a modern wonder or building in the present world.
Students will have to explain the purpose of both buildings and how each building gives value to
its respective society. They will be able to show this by creating a poster, PowerPoint,
infographic, short video, or diorama. Their final product will be presented to the class.

Standards
History:
● HS.H4.2 Explain how artistic, philosophical, and scientific ideas have developed
and shaped society and institutions
● HS.H1.7 Analyze how technological innovation and trade have affected
economic development and transformed societies.
● HS.H4.3 Examine how access to information and technology has been used to
influence society.

Math:
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSG.MG.A.1
● Use geometric shapes, their measures, and their properties to describe
objects (e.g., modeling a tree trunk or a human torso as a cylinder).*
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.8.G.C.9
● Know the formulas for the volumes of cones, cylinders, and spheres and use
them to solve real-world and mathematical problems.

Objectives
The student will be able to:
● Identify all 7 ancient wonders by participating in a Kahoot
at the end of the day.
● Explore the culture, innovations, and significance of the
society associated with their chosen ancient wonder
through think-alouds. (ie. Egyptians for the great pyramids,
Greek for the statue of Zeus, etc.)
● Identify shapes and measures in their wonders by
modeling with geometric shapes.
● Show how artistic, philosophical, and scientific ideas have
developed their ancient wonder’s society through small
group pair-share
 ● Find a modern-day building or structure to compare and contrast with their
chosen wonder. They will be comparing and contrasting both the geometric
construction and societal significance.
● Present their research findings in a summative form whether that be a
PowerPoint or poster board.

Compelling Question
How does the scale of these ancient wonders portray the
progress and innovation of these ancient civilizations? How do the
ancient wonders compare to modern-day architecture?
 DAY 1: THE INQUIRY

Lesson Hook:
● The teacher is going to project the compelling question on the board
● The teacher will pass out the opinionnaire to the students. Students will fill out
the opinionnaire.
● OPINIONNAIRE LINK
● The teacher shows the class how to get to the text set
● ANCIENT WONDERS TEXT SET

Activity:
● Students will individually explore the resources linked in the text set.
● Students will be expected to have a basic understanding of the 7 ancient wonders by the
end of the exploration.
● Students will be able to explore out-of-the-text set resources with teacher permission.

Closing:
● Students will now update their opinionnaire. Now that they have more information we
want to see if their opinions have changed.
● We will ask the students to move into groups. They will be grouped by their favorite
wonder. This is where teachers will come around and make smaller project groups. This
way the students will be working together based on similar interests.
● After groups are made, students will participate in a Kahoot individually as an exit ticket.
The Kahoot will be quizzing their newfound knowledge on the ancient wonders.
● KAHOOT LINK
 DAY 2: SOURCE GATHERING AND ANALYSIS

Lesson Hook:
● Teacher will begin by reading a text regarding the ancient wonders, stopping throughout
to discuss with the class.
● Teacher will explain how they took some annotations after each paragraph, and discuss
those annotations in brief with the class (to provide an example of the think-aloud activity
to follow).
● Students will add their own thoughts on what the teacher is reading during each pause.
● Once reading and discussions are completed, the teacher will explain the think-aloud
method demonstrated and provide instructions so that they may practice it next.

Activity:
● Have students go through the module of their chosen ancient wonder. Students will read
an article on their ancient wonder as a group.
● 7 WONDER ARTICLES
● The students will take turns reading aloud. When a student is not reading, they are
taking notes to share during the discussion phase. These notes will be like annotations,
the student’s thoughts, feeling, and quips about what they have read.
○ If they are the reader, the student will do their best to take mental notes but no
written notes will be required until they are no longer the reader.
● Students will then share their think-aloud/notes from the article with the rest of their table
whenever the table changes their reader.
○ The reader will change after each paragraph.
● Other students will listen and take brief notes while the singular student is sharing during
a discussion.
● READ ALOUD INTRODUCTION

Closing:
● Students will form different groups consisting of students with different wonders.
● Students in these groups will share and compare their notes for their article to share
what they learned with each other.
● After each student has shared, students will form new groups consisting of only those
with their same wonder.
● Students will compare and contrast their notes to see if they all got the same points from
their reading.
● The group will write their summative information on an online class discussion board and
post it by the end of class (as a group with the members’ names at the top).
● Groups are expected to post one comment under the other groups’ posts.
 DAY 3: BUILDING FOUNDATION

Lesson Hook:
● The teacher will begin with a warm-up game. The game will be more like an activity
where the students in their project groups will list as many shapes both 2D and 3D as
they can.
● Students will not only list the names of their shapes but also any formulas that they can
remember on how to find their areas and perimeters.
● After a few minutes, the teacher will call on each group to contribute one shape to the
class glossary. They can contribute the area or perimeter formula if all of their shapes
are named.
○ The teacher will keep calling on groups until no one has anything to share
anymore.
Activity:
● Using the class glossary, students will make a copy of their chosen wonder using
shapes. An example will be given.
○ I.e. triangle for pyramid, cylinder for columns, triangle for the gap between
colossus legs.
● Students will try their best to estimate the area of these shapes using historical context.
If they are unable to do that, they will estimate using a 1-inch scale.
● This estimate of the wonder needs to be able to be displayed. It could be drawn on
paper, using technology, or as a sculpture/diorama. Whatever the students choose, it
needs to be a part of their final presentation at the end.
● Students will have to list all shapes used in the estimate.
● SHAPE TABLE LIST
● This should not take the whole class period but students do have the whole class period
to complete it.
● If students finish early, they will work on writing a 1 to 2 paragraph piece explaining the
importance of their wonder to the society it is from. I.e. why were the pyramids important
to the Egyptians?
Closing:
● As a closing activity, the teacher will have a class discussion about each wonder’s
difference estimates.
○ Just like how the class glossary was made, each group will have to share their
estimate. The teacher will write each estimate on the board.
○ By having everyone share, we will have a good pool of estimates to make
observations.
● Once all estimates are written on the board, the class will make observations about the
numbers.
○ What wonder is the largest?
 ○ What wonder is the smallest?
○ Did we have any issues or outliners making estimates?

DAY 4: CRITICALLY THINKING, COMPARING, AND CONTRASTING

Lesson Hook:
● Teachers will present their own comparison between an ancient wonder and a modern
building. Students will not be allowed to use this example as their own choice.
● COMPARE AND CONTRAST SHEET EXAMPLE
● After the presentation, students will get together with their project groups to decide upon
a modern building.
○ A list of modern buildings will be provided, but students can choose a building not
listed, they just need to get it approved by one of the teachers before proceeding.
○ LIST OF MODERN BUILDINGS
○ Groups can choose the same modern building as long as they do not share the
same wonder.
○ A modern building does not mean a new building, it simply means that it can not
be a part of the ancient wonders. Example: Stonehenge, Eiffel tower, the statue
of liberty, empire state building are all things that groups could choose to
compare and contrast their wonder to.

Activity Part 1:
● This will be the ultimate work time for your students. If there has been something that
they have not finished on a previous day, today is the day for them to get it done.
● If they are all caught up on their work, then the group gets to move forward in comparing
and contrasting the two buildings. A compare and contrast worksheet will be provided if
the students want to use it.
○ COMPARE AND CONTRAST SHEET
Activity Part 2:
● After the groups have compared and contrasted, they are going to combine all their
knowledge into a presentation.
● The presentation needs to have the name of their wonder, the name of their modern
building, the estimate of their wonder, and some visuals for the audience to look at while
they present.
○ The paragraphs the group wrote about the importance of their wonder will be
shared during the presentation as well as their compare and contrast findings.
○ Presentations should be about 5 to 10 minutes long
● RUBRIC FOR PRESENTATION HERE
● Once the presentation is complete, the group can practice presenting.
Closing:
● The closing activity will be an exit ticket of sorts. Each group will be required to have a
check-in with the teacher to make sure they all have the required elements.
○ If the group does not have the required elements then the group will have to
complete the rest of the work outside of class or stay after school to finish. They
will have a small amount of time to make the finishing touches on their project
tomorrow before presenting. It is up to teacher discretion if they think that there
would be enough time for the group to finish up the next day.

DAY 5: PRESENTATION OF KNOWLEDGE

Lesson Hook:
● The start of this day is simply preparation for the presentations. This is the time period
that all groups will have to finish any last-minute things and get everything they need in
order.
● There is no formal hook or activity to be done during this part of the class, it is simply
time for the students to use.

Activity:
● The teacher will display on the board the group order of presentations. This order was
randomly generated by spinning a wheel for each spot. You can do this at a site like this:
Picker Wheel.
● The teacher will also pass out a note-taking guide that the students have to fill out for
each presentation. This is to ensure that the students are truly paying attention to
everything being presented to them.
○ NOTE-TAKING GUIDE
● Presentations will begin after the guide is passed out. Each group will have 10 to 15
minutes given to them. Only 10 minutes to present, they are given 15 if the class has
questions to ask.

Closing:
● After all, presentations are over, the teacher will ask for feedback from students about
the 5-day lesson.
○ What even well?
○ What went poorly?
○ Any improvements or suggestions if we were to do this sort of thing again?
● Students will complete a peer and self-evaluation form. The evaluations will contribute to
their final grade
○ PEER AND SELF EVAL FORM
● The note-taking guide will have to be turned in at the end of the class along with all
materials used for the project.
○ These include the written paragraphs, the compare and contrast sheet, shape
list, opinionnaire, peer evaluation form, and any notes taken during the
read-aloud.