WOMEN IN MATHEMATICS: HISTORY TO TODAY
By: Valerie Partridge

STANDARD: All students will be able to identify women (or men if they are underrepresented) who are leaders and achievers in the particular core content curriculum areas.

GRADE LEVEL: Middle School and High School

OBJECTIVES: The students will:

1. identify a woman that played an important role in the history of mathematics and research her accomplishments.
2. identify a woman currently involved in mathematics or a career involving mathematics, and research her accomplishments.

TIME: 1 class period will be needed to present the project and then 1 or 2 class periods to present their research. This will depend on how many of the students choose to do an oral report with an accompanying outline vs. a detailed paper to be handed in that will not require an oral presentation.

MATERIALS: The teacher should begin by displaying a partial list of women in the history of mathematics and places the students might look to identify women currently involved in math careers.

1. The students will begin by brainstorming whether they wish to research a women involved in the history of mathematics or a women currently involved in mathematics.
2. The teacher may make the following suggestions:


Women in the history of mathematics:
Hypatia, Marie Agnesi, Jewell Plummer Cobb, Sonya Kovalevsky, etc.

Women currently involved in mathematics:
women employed in the math/computer science departments at local colleges and universities, women employed at area industries such as Raytheon and Textron, women employed by the RI Department of Education, etc.

3. The students should be able to detail accomplishments that the woman has made in terms of mathematics, her career, her industry, and/or her educational institution. They should also research her educational background and current involvement, where applicable.

EXTENDED ACTIVITIES:

It would be great to have a woman speaker come to school to talk to the class about women involved in mathematics.

5--Outline neatly organized and good detailed information. Presentation well organized with interesting information. The individual was well researched and the student was very familiar with important details about her life.

4--Outline was neatly organized and had detailed information. The presentation was not as effective, although the information was presented thoroughly.

3--Outline was not as organized as it could have been. Presentation was not smooth. The student read a lot of the information and was not familiar with the important details.

2--There was little organization displayed in the outline and the student was not prepared for the presentation.

1--No outline and the presentation had little factual information

5--Paper neatly organized and displayed excellent use of composition techniques. Excellent details in the paper about the life of the woman mathematician and her contributions to mathematics.

4--Paper organized with composition techniques. Paper contains details about the life of the woman mathematician and her contributions to mathematics, but student could have done more in-depth research.

3--Paper not well written and had minimal composition requirements. Research details were minimal.

2--Paper not well written, but there was evidence the students had done some research.

1--Paper not well written, and it was poorly researched.

HINTS: