Back to Teachers Home

Lost King of the Maya

Ideas from Teachers

(Gr. 6-8)
This activity could be used with NOVA's "Lost King of the Maya" program.

Topics: math, place value, number theory

Even at these middle grade levels, it is important to revisit previous mathematical ideas to deepen understanding.

All of our 7th grade teachers participated in an integrated unit on the Maya. I created a worksheet which represented a "pure" base 20 system. I wrote about a dozen numbers in Maya notation, and gave the students the Arabic equivalents. There job as "archeologists" was to determine the structure of the Maya system with no other information than what I had given them. It took one class period (about 60 minutes) for them to determine the basic characteristics of the pure base 20 system, including the "vertical" orientation, the places being powers of 20, the value of the dot and line, and the function of "zero" symbol. During a second class period they completed an exercise converting Maya numerals to Arabic notation and vice-versa.

We then looked at the modified base 20 system used for the Maya Long Count calendar and tried to map the Maya intervals onto our own habits of reporting dates. We had a lot of fun looking at the glyphs found on the stele (copied from a book on Maya Language) and seeing the number components of many of them.

The culminating activity was a letter written by each student to a fictitious sponsoring foundation or university, reporting on the conclusions the student archeologist had formulated about the Maya mathematical system and it's similarities to and differences from our own. I also asked them to speculate on what sort of algorithm the Maya might have used to add or subtract, and dared them to try multiplication or division. All managed addition and subtraction, a few attempted multiplication and division. Their letters also were to indicate an area of interest for further research and request further funding.

We scored the letter on a math rubric aimed at accuracy and comprehensiveness of mathematical content, and on our state writing rubric.

Editor's note: To read an extended description of this idea, see Featured Teachers. In the printable activity, Calendar Count, students can calculate the date of their birth using the Maya Long Count calendar system.

Sent in by
Bob Miller
Wood Middle School
Wilsonville, OR