Campus Math Trail! Finding the Math Across Campus

 

Mathematics is everywhere! It’s in the places we go and the things we do. We should seek mathematics in our everyday lives, as in reading. Mathematic understanding is just not the select few people with what we call the math gene. Looking for the relevancy in mathematics should encompass our daily lives as we seek to make meaning with mathematics.

One of my goals as a mathematics teacher educator is to pull out the real-life instances for using mathematics daily at the early childhood and elementary levels. For my preservice teachers (PST), this could be an awesome challenge especially when they may feel the connections are real connections.  For this reason and because it is Homecoming on campus, I challenged them to look across campus to determine how mathematics is used across the domains. The domains include numbers and operation-base ten, numbers and operations-fractions, counting and cardinality, geometry, and measurement and data.

 I begin by showing a video of the beautiful campus of Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University (AAMU). AAMU is a land grant HBCU serving more than 6,000 students. The school is locating in Normal, AL which is located in Huntsville, Alabama that sits on 800 acres of land. 

After showing the video of AAMU, I challenged my PST to think about mathematics across campus. After a few minutes of pregnant silence, one preservice teacher suggested that we look at the stadium. AAMU is fortunate enough to have  Louis Crews Stadium is located on the campus where students do not have to travel for a good football game and band battle. Figure 1 is the PST’s findings and how mathematics is related to the various domains of mathematics.

Figure 1


PST recognized numbers and operations and number recognition readily from this activity. This is evident in them picking out the football field having numbers and the score on the scoreboard. In addition, PST talked about the football game and how touchdowns are multiples of 6 with an extra point attempted can make the score multiples of 7.   Because these examples include more common mathematics domains, I challenged PST to look at other domains. This led to the discussion about the field goal and scoreboard related to geometry. The PST included time as a tool for measurement. More instances of geometry included the stadium seats as parallel lines and the school’s athletic logo is inscribed in a circle.

The Campus Math Trail can bring to life the mathematics that surrounds us. The meaningful discourse about the Campus Math Trail allowed PST to build a shared understanding of different mathematical ideas by analyzing the campus map. PST used and connected mathematical representation through the form of Campus Maths Trail to deepen their understanding of mathematics concepts. Facilitating discourse and using and connecting mathematical representation are discussed as eight successful teaching practices (NCTM, 2014).  The next steps are to venture into other parts of the campus for mathematical ideas and write real-life problems based on our adventures.  

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