His Treasure Seekers

Since Classical Conversations released The Math Map in 2023, I’ve gone through the 30 lessons at least 5 times in various forms, as a tutor, a teacher at home, and “lead learner” trying to understand concepts I never learned in school myself. This year, as I prep each week (taking my Challenge class through it on Community Day, in addition to using it at home with my four youngest children), I’m writing a post on each lesson, sharing things I’ve found helpful or offering some suggestions in hopes of making it less intimidating to those just getting started.

Tips for Lesson 9: Straight Lines

• Invention (i² page)
  • I highly recommend pulling out Lesson 3 (where 1D was introduced) and comparing it to the description of 2D.
  • It’s also helpful to review the definition of a dimension (see Chart 2:1 from Lesson 2)
  • Take some time to compare the polar coordinate plane and rectangular coordinate plane, as these will be important to understand in most of the lesson from here on out.
  • There are probably some unfamiliar words here (like “ordinate” and “abscissa”), so taking a moment to attend to those will be helpful

• Memoria and Arrangement (i³page)
  • This page overwhelmed us at first glance, but after taking some time to attend to it, we found a lot was actually familiar (x and y axes, Quadrants, positive and negative, etc.) Focus on the familiar! Every year that will grow, I promise.
  • Have students consider what would be helpful to memorize (the positive and negatives in each Quadrant, forms of lines, formulas for midpoint and distance, etc.) Pick one thing each year to memorize, and next year it will look familiar.

• Charts The charts have a lot of good information to master, but unlike with other weeks I didn’t feel like any of them were essential to completing the lesson pages in any of the Domains up to Binomials.

Lesson Pages

• On page 1 (and its complements 5, 9, and 13), a 3rd type of plane (Complex) is added (at least in the Domains from Reals and up). Take time to note how coordinates are labeled for each.

Other help as you explore Lesson 9:

• I have found The Math Map Book Club to be a great resource, but there are so many episodes out there, it can be a bit overwhelming. If you just want to focus on this specific lesson, here’s my YouTube Playlist of Book Club videos about Lesson 9 Straight Lines (with episodes from 2023 to the present).

Just for fun:

• Sir Cumference and the Viking’s Map by Cindy Neuschwander is a fun way to introduce rectangular plane coordinates to younger children.

• Lesson 9 moves into 2D. Several of my kids love to draw, so as we discussed dimensions, I thought of this video about Disney’s Multi-plane camera, which helped create a 3D effect when drawing 2D animation.