Grandfather Tang's Story

Objective:  Students will become familiar with tangrams. 

Materials: Grandfather Tang's Story by Ann Tompert, overhead tangrams, overhead projector, and computer with Internet connection.  

Book Overview:  Two shape-changing foxes compete in this Chinese folktale to outdo each other at becoming different animals.  The tangrams are rearranged throughout the story to represent all of the animals.  In the end, the two foxes pull together.  

Introduction:  The teacher will begin by reading the story, Grandfather Tang's Story.  She will introduce tangrams and show students a set on overhead projector.  Invite students to come up and assemble pieces into different animals throughout the story.  

Web Activities: Students will go to Tangram Puzzles web site and practice covering figures with tangrams.  They may also visit Tangram History and try making the animals with tangram manipulatives. 

Assessment:  Print out and distribute Tangram Pattern.  Have students make a figure with the seven pieces and write a riddle to go with it.  Collect all of them from students and after using as assessment, make a class tangram book so that students can try to do classmates tangram puzzles.  

Home Learning:  Students create a tangram animal or creature and write a short story about it.  

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