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Math in A Cultural Context

This series is a supplemental math curriculum based on the traditional wisdom and practices of the Yup’ik people of southwest Alaska. The result of more than a decade of collaboration between math educators and Yup’ik elders, these modules connect cultural knowledge to school mathematics. Students are challenged to communicate and think mathematically as they solve inquiry-oriented problems, which require creative, practical and analytical thinking. Classroom-based research strongly suggests that students engaged in this curriculum can develop deeper mathematical understandings than students who engage only with a procedure-oriented, paper-and-pencil curriculum.


  • Building a Fish Rack - Kit

    Investigations into Proof, Properties, Perimeter, and Area

    Barbara L. Adams, Jerry Lipka

    In this module for grade six, formal mathematics are developed through hands-on activities related to building a fish rack for the salmon harvest.

  • Picking Berries - Kit

    Connections Between Data Collection, Graphing, and Measuring

    Jerry Lipka, Janice Parmelee, Rebecca Adams

    In this module for grades two and three, students engage in a series of hands-on activities that help them explore data, graphic representation and linear measuring. Kit includes teacher resource, two student readers (Big John and Little Henry and Berry Picking), one coloring pages master, two posters, and one CD-ROM.

  • Going to Egg Island - Kit

    Adventures in Grouping and Place Values

    Jerry Lipka

    In a series of problems built around the story of a second-grade girl gathering sea bird eggs in the spring, students in grades one and two learn and apply the mathematical concepts and skills of counting and grouping two-digit numbers, estimating, measuring, sorting and place values. Kit includes teacher resource, student reader, and more.

  • Building a Smokehouse - Kit

    The Geometry of Prisms

    Melissa Kagle, Valerie Barber, Jerry Lipka, Ferdinand Sharp, Anthony Rickard

    In this module for grades six and seven, students learn how to build a smokehouse modeled after ones currently used by the Yup’ik people.

  • Drying Salmon - Kit

    Journeys into Proportional and Pre-Algebraic Thinking

    Barbara L. Adams, Jerry Lipka

    This sixth and seventh grade module explores pre-algebraic and proportional thinking using the unique system of body measures that a Yup’ik elder used when hanging her salmon to dry. Includes one teacher resource, three posters, and one CD-ROM.

  • Salmon Fishing - Kit

    Investigations into Probability

    Aishath Shehenaz Adam, Jerry Lipka, Barbara L. Adams, Anthony Rickard, Kay Gilliland, Joan Parker Webster

    Students in grades six and seven use activities based on subsistence and commercial fishing in southwest Alaska to investigate various topics related to probability. Kit includes a teacher resource, two posters, and two CD-ROMs.

  • Star Navigation - Kit

    Explorations into Angles and Measurement

    Barbara L. Adams, Melissa Kagle, Frederick George

    Students in grades five to seven learn ways of observing, measuring and navigating during the day and at night, including specific details of the location and orientation of the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia. Kit includes a teacher resource, a student reader, two posters, and a CD-ROM.