Leonardo the Traveler

Est. Class Sessions: 1

Summarizing the Lesson

After reading and discussion, help students understand that the basic outline of the story is historically accurate, sharing from the following information.

Leonardo was a real person known today as Fibonacci, the greatest mathematician of the Middle Ages.
His father really was a merchant, and Leonardo did live in Bugia and traveled in North Africa and the Middle East.
On his travels he met Arab mathematicians who were more advanced than European mathematicians at that time.
In particular, after learning about the Hindu-Arabic numeration system, Leonardo wrote about it in his Liber Abaci, Book of the Abacus, published in 1202.
Leonardo really did sign his name Bigollo, which can mean Leonardo the Blockhead or Leonardo the Traveler, although the exact reason is unclear.

Refer students to the Helping Leonardo the Traveler Solve Problems pages in the Student Activity Book. The problems on these pages ask students to use the representations in the story to connect to the representations students have been using for addition and subtraction (e.g., base-ten pieces, number lines, mental math strategies).

Use the Helping Leonardo the Traveler Solve Problems pages with the Feedback Box in the Student Activity Book to assess student progress toward recognizing that different partitions of a number have the same total [E1]; representing and solving subtraction problems using baseten shorthand and number lines [E2]; using mental math strategies for multidigit addition and subtraction [E3]; and using paper-and-pencil methods to add and subtract multidigit problems [E4].

Student Guide: