Recreating the Wheel Contest

In these days of writing across the curriculum, it is important to show students that they must write about math in as clear and clever a way as they write about history or language arts topics. This lesson is designed to have the student be creative with both math concepts and words and can be used as a graded assignment for both language arts and math.

The basic assignment is to have the student take three multi-step math word problems...similar to those given on your state's standardized tests for the student's grade level...and work them into an adventure story of the student's own creation as the three major tasks that the hero/heroine and his/her sidekick have to undertake in order to save the day/resuce the damsel in distress/whatever. The student must also add in minor obstacles/challenges relating to the rules of math for whatever topics have already been taught in his/her particular grade level for that year. The story ends with the successful outcome of the quest.

In the case of the major tasks, the student is required to show the work that is done to solve the problem by the hero/heroine and his/her sidekick. If solved incorrectly, there must be consequences of a mathematical sort -- death cannot be an option since the teaching of math is the primary goal of the lesson, and the correct solution must be provided by another character, possibly the gloating task master/mistress, or some other minor character the hero/heroine meets along the way.

In the case of minor obstacles/challenges, the student is required to have the hero/heroine and/or his/her sidekick explain correctly how a rule, theorem, postulate, procedure or law operates within a particular set of circumstances or problems. For example, the task master/mistress could present a student with an order of operations problem and ask the hero/heroine to check and see if the answer provided is correct or not, and the student would then show the hero/heroine solving the problem to double check the answer. As a twist in the story, the sidekick could be better at this sort of math than the hero/heroine and the student could have them come up with two different answers and have the sidekick explain why his/her answer is correct.

There should be a minimum of 5 characters in the story and a maximum of 8. These characters can be human, animal, alien, or whatever, as long as their mathematical knowledge parallels what the student is in the process of learning in his/her particular grade level. There needs to be a hero/heroine, a sidekick, one or more task masters/mistresses, a person or small group who need help, and one or more minor characters who appear for a short time and then go on their way...these can either be helpful or a hindrance to the hero/heroine along his/her quest journey.

For young students who are not adept at writing stories, or those students who are older and have a limited ability for creative writing, the story can be written as either a comic book or a picture book in which drawings can tell part of the story. The number of problems and steps within each problem can be limited or expanded depending upon the student's grade and ability levels. You can also allow students to add in up to 2 extra major tasks and 5 extra minor obstacles/challenges if they really get into the assignment and/or are above average in their abilities at working out mathematical word problems and creative writing.

A rubric would need to be designed to account for both the math and the creative writing aspects of the assignment. It could be given one overall grade for both classes, or a single grade for the math portion and another single grade for the creative writing that are totally independent of each other. This could be decided by the teacher based on what is being assessed in the piece as well as on the student's needs, ability levels, etc.