One day a parent of a student in my math class brought in her daughter’s math book. The parent noted that because of the inclement weather we have been having in Worcester, Massachusetts parking was very limited. The problem was posed to my math class of “How many cars can fit in our parking lot?”

     I had each student put his or her coat on and we headed out to the parking lot. Students were not allowed to count the cars, but to get an accurate idea of what the parking lot looks like.

     So our Math quest began. Everyday after we corrected out math homework, the student who received the highest grade on their homework made an estimate of cars in the parking lot. The student was allowed to chose a partner and count the actual cars in the parking lot. We did this project for fourteen schools days (there are twenty-eight students in my math class so I let everyone have one turn).

      After we collect all of our data, we had decided to graph our information. This allowed us to compare the estimated and actual to see if there were any trends (there wasn’t).

      This project helped my math class in so many significant ways:

• Students discovered – math is all around us
• Students were able to reflect on and clarify thinking about mathematical language
• Students were able to use skills of reading, listening, and viewing to interpret and evaluate mathematical ideas
• Students were able to take an everyday situation and graph it

According to the Massachusetts Framework the following strands were addressed:

Patterns, Relations and Functions
Use pictures, models, tables, charts, graphs, words, number sentences, and mathematical notations to interpret mathematical relationships.

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability
Collect and organize data using observations, measurements, surveys, or experiments, and identify appropriate ways to display the data.

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