There are many ways that I can introduce science and math into my humanities classroom. We are wrapping up our unit on Mesopotamia. We focused a lot on Ancient Sumer and Scribes. This is the perfect opportunity to talk about writing. I will introduce the lesson on arabic numbers by reviewing with students what a scribe is. Second, we will discuss what types of records scribes kept. I will make sure to remind students that one of the primary purposes for writing in the ancient world was to keep record of surpluses and other things that involved counting and numbers. We will discuss how symbols evolved over time to represent numbers. Second, I will introduce the history of arabic numbers by having them read an article and watch a video introducing arabic numbers. Students will then be given a worksheet of Babylonian cuneiform numbers and write different numbers based on those symbols.

Discussion of science is so important to the humanities classroom because there are so many scientific developments that occurred in ancient history. There are so many scientific developments that we know exist today, but do not often know that it is a connected to developments historians discovered within ancient artifacts.