Connecting local history, ancient history, and mathematics: the Eustis Elementary School pilot project

Abstract

In Clark and Robson (2008), we described the re-discovery, translation, and edition of a collection of 25 cuneiform tablets that reside in the Robert Manning Strozier Library at Florida State University (FSU). In addition, we discussed the construction of a classroom instructional unit, intended for use with Grade 4 and 5 students (aged 9 to 11) in Eustis, Florida—the retirement home of Edgar J Banks, who sold the tablet collection to FSU in 1922. Here I describe piloting the instructional unit with students, their teachers, and district supervisors in Fall 2008. The unit was created from the historical text found on FSU 22 and FSU 23 and the grade level mathematics standards from Florida's Next Generation Sunshine State Standards (NGSSS) for mathematics (2007).

Notes

¹ For example, it is difficult to locate the exact year that Banks retired to Lake County, Florida. Many newspaper sources—including obituaries for both Banks and his wife Minja—report different years. The different sources place Banks in Lake County sometime between 1916 and 1921.

² FSU 22 and 23 (as well as the entire FSU cuneiform tablet collection) can be accessed via the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative at http://cdli.ucla.edu/

³ Several recent publications suggest that this may be changing; see Jankvist 2009, for example.

⁴ Unfortunately, this correspondence is one-sided: only Banks' letters to FSCW employees have been found.

⁵ All teacher and pupil names are pseudonyms.

⁶ Both Mrs Dean and Mrs Adams (the district mathematics supervisors) attended two previous presentations I had given about Banks and the cuneiform tablets. In addition, Mrs Adams was instrumental in providing me with contacts in the Lake County area while conducting research on Banks.

⁷ My recording equipment malfunctioned halfway through data collection for the pilot study.

⁸ Snap cubes connect together at different orientations. A ten-rod contains ten linearly connected snap cubes; a hundred-block is comprised of ten connected ten-rods.

⁹ On the other hand, the classroom teachers (Mrs Sands and Mrs Nolan) expressed some discomfort with all the ‘weird words’ and anticipated that this would be a point of difficulty for the pupils.