Math Across the Curriculum: The Russian Revolution

Teachers are always on the lookout for materials that will provide some variety, and history teachers are no exception. One great way to add interest to a history class is to work in a little math.

These worksheets are user-friendly and include not just answers but also solutions explained in detail. This makes them perfect for teachers that love history, but who aren't specialists in math.

Teacher convenience is a hallmark of my products.

I believe in providing teachers with a variety of materials based around the same problem set. This way, teachers have lots of choices at their fingertips and can more easily adapt materials to their own needs. With this in mind, with this download you will get:

• a PDF file of all problems/worksheets for easy printing
• a word processing file so that you can just as easily edit the worksheets
• a PowerPoint presentation so that you can display the problems and their solutions on a screen and go through them one by one if desired. The PowerPoint presentation is fully illustrated with period photographs. The worksheets, on the other hand, have been streamlined to make xeroxing as fast and simple as possible.

More Information: Why include math in a history class?

Occasionally including math-based problems in the history curriculum has a number of outstanding benefits:
• Help students to keep math skills fresh and sharp.
• Provide the class with something quite different from the other lessons for the week.
• Demonstrate how math skills are useful in other contexts.
• Encourage cooperative learning and peer-tutoring.
• Differentiate instruction.

About the materials provided

These math problems are designed to provide teachers with a self-contained lesson that combines basic math skills with interesting historical information about the Russian Revolution. All facts and figures needed to solve the math problems are included in the problems themselves. This is not just about math, however; even as students are crunching numbers, they will be acquiring some key, basic information about the events under study. This "learning through the back door" approach will help to reinforce facts already learned; by working with data instead of just being asked to "learn" it, historical information can be more thoroughly acquired.

The materials include two worksheets, each containing 10 problems. One is structured as a multiple-choice problem set while the other one is designed to allow for free response. Teachers can differentiate instruction by providing students with one version or another based on degree of math mastery or other factors.
Both worksheets are designed to fit on a single double-sided sheet of paper so that copying and storage needs can be minimized.