Lesson Plan for Quilting

1. Divide students into groups, with each group assigned one of the cultural background pages (Gees Bend, Appalachian, etc.). Note that within the “four directions” page there are 4 cultures (Iroquois, Hmong, etc.). So that page could be further broken up depending on how many students you have. If you are focusing exclusively on teaching Cartesian coordinates and reflection symmetry, you may want to have students cover only the “four directions” material.

2. Tell students something like: “This is going to help you practice their research and presentation skills. You need to read through your assigned pages, and report back to the class on what you found that was interesting about that group’s quilt traditions. Make sure you say it in your own words, don’t just read from the page.”

3. Have each group report out on what they learned, with the page they are describing projected on a screen.

4. Move to the tutorials. If you are focused on a particular topic, have them use that specific tutorial and software. “Four directions” for Cartesian coordinates and reflection symmetry; Anishinaabe for polar coordinates and circle geometry; Gee’s Bend for scaling transformations and iteration, and Appalachian and Lakota for iteration and angles. If you are just teaching coding in general, any of them will do fine.

5. Once finished with the tutorial, they can either continue to practice with the “challenge” projects, or go to the full software for that quilt tradition.

6. Once finished with their virtual design (make sure they know how to save, and that they don’t wait until the end and lose their work), they can physically render their designs using instructions here.