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In Dunwoody, not far from Atlanta, Georgia, James Unger's fourth grade math class at Austin Elementary has no walls separating it from the class across the hall where children are singing a song in German. In fact, there are no walls separating any of the classrooms. It's not a problem; his students are focused on making up math problems to match their drawings. The drawings are of things like a tree adorned with Christmas lights outside the main entrance to the school, a wall full of posters outside the office and rows of colorful flags hanging in the cafeteria. The theme of all the drawings is the same; they capture locations around the school where students found examples of the math concepts they are learning. In some cases, they found examples that involve things they have not yet learned, and they are stretching to grasp the concepts. 
One girl notices a shadow cast by her curvy dinosaur-shaped pen and is
trying to estimate the size of the shadow compared to the size of the
shadow cast by a similarly-sized dinosaur toy. When she figures out how
to characterize her problem, how to solve it, and can communicate it
successfully to her classmates, she will get to use a digital camera to
capture the pen and its shadow. |
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Across the district, in Scottsdale, Georgia, Angelique Conner's third graders at Robert Shaw Theme School are sitting in noisy groups. Some teams are entering text on computer screens, others are decorating booklet covers, and yet others are squinting into the air, dreaming up math problems that match photographs printed on top of blank sheets of paper given out by their teacher. The pictures of things like trees, posters, windows and library book shelves were taken during a walk that Angelique and her students took around the school grounds. |
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 Math Trail teams create booklets with their math problems and narratives before using the computer. |
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