Mathematical Adventures Await You!
What shapes do you see behind us?
What do you notice and wonder?
Castell de Capdepera, Majorca, Spain -
Building began in the year 310 but was completed in the 14th century!
I recently had an opportunity to travel to Spain to visit our son who is studying abroad. While there, I was struck by the beauty of the architecture and the math that was foundational to what I was seeing. Shapes, structure, balance, symmetry, patterns ... I began collecting examples of the beauty of math.
It occurred to me that we tend to visit places and look for the history, the nature, the art work, the food, the entertainment ... really anything BUT the mathematics. What if we changed that? What if we started documenting math all around us? AND highlighting how math is connected to all of those wonderful things such as history, nature, art, etc.?
I have created a resource for you that will get you started. I've placed some of my mathematical photos into an interactive set of slides that you can use with your students to get them talking.
We don't have to travel anywhere really to do this. Many years ago I used to take teachers on a mathematical tour of Boston. (Maybe you came on a tour with me in the 90's?) After the tour, teachers would design their own tour of their school, playground, or town.
If we start highlighting mathematics and posing mathematical questions and tasks about our surroundings with our students, we help them come to see the world as a place full of relevant and vibrant mathematics. Here’s how you can do this:
Designing a Mathematical Tour
Decide a route that is easily walkable with many things to look at along the way. Consider: town parks, playgrounds, your school.
As you walk, consider "mathy things": clocks, floor tiles, windows arranged in arrays, things with dates on them, interesting shapes, something measureable. These will be your stops along the tour.
Write a question for students to solve at each stop. 8-10 stops is a good amount, especially if each task will take 5 minutes or so to solve.
Design your materials for the students. These can include: a map of the route, a list of the stops with a question to solve and a blank space to record their solution.
Give your tour a cool name and set the date for the event.
Have your students take the tour walking in teams / groups.
Share results. Invite students to create their own tour.
Here are some sample questions:
Stop in the foyer and look up. There you will see a window with many shapes. What are all of the shapes that you see? Draw a picture of the window. Now design your own window.
Walk straight ahead and stop in front of room 18. There you will see a mural painted on the wall that was painted in 2008. How long ago was the mural painted? Show your thinking.
Next, you wil be walking up stairs. Measure the height of one step. Count the steps. How can you use that information to find out the vertical distance to the top of the staircase? Find the vertical distance from the first floor to the top of the stairs. Show your thinking.
I encourage you to take this idea and run with it. If you do, I'll be curious ...
What did you design? How did your students respond? Did you find a way to continue the quest for finding math all around you? If so, how are you doing that? How do these activities impact student learning? So much to think about!
Enjoy a month of mathematical explorations!
Kindly,
