The students in the article were reading a Harry Potter novel and a problem came up that eventually turned into a math problem. The problem connected Literature to Mathematics, made the problem easy to understand for the students, and connected it to daily life. Sounds like the connections standard all over again! The students were to make a budget list of all the supplies that they were have at Hogwarts School. To bring about the idea of budgeting the class had a discussion as a whole and established the basics of what they would need. Once they began on their own they realized that they were not going to be able to get everything that they wanted. All students were excited to help one another out through the problem. At the conclusion of the problem the students and teacher came together again and gained a greater understanding of how this problem could be related to the real world. The teacher enjoyed this process because she likes Harry Potter and she also could see where her students were making errors and struggling.
It was good for the students to have this PBL because it brought about so many of the process standards into play. Communication was expressed through the class forum and group discussions throughout the problem. Connections were made to the real world while bring together both mathematics and literature. This problem was also very beneficial for the students because they were able to relate to it well. Reasoning and Proof came into play when they had to reason and provide proof as to why they chose the things they did to stay under the budget. They also had to use their problem solving skills all throughout the problem when they chose different items to represent their materials list to head off to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy. Overall, I really enjoyed this article and wouldn’t mind doing it in my class too at some point in time. I enjoy Harry Potter too so I don’t have any bad/negative things to say about this lesson.
Beaton, T. (2004). Harry potter in the mathematics classroom. MathematicsTeaching in the Middle School 10(1), 23-25.
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