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"In
this activity, I saw a way to get my students working with each other, a
way to have them become active learners, and a way to increase their
respect for their own community." |
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According to master teacher Kay Toliver, who has used the math trail project often in her long career, mathematics
is far from an ivory-tower subject; rather, it is a basic language that can be used to describe all kinds of things that are real and important in life. As her often-surprised students will attest, you really do need math for just about everything.In the math trail activity, students go out into their communities, find examples of the math they have been learning, and create problems related to their discoveries. 
In Toliver’s class, students work in teams to document their work
with photographs, drawings, narratives and maps to create trails that
begin and end at a plaque on the wall of their school building. The trails wind through their East Harlem, New York, neighborhood with stops at locations where they have found examples of mathematics. Each team creates a math trail book that can be shared with other students and parents. The math trail has been so effective for Toliver that it became the subject of an episode of her popular video series, “Teacher Talk.” Click here to view segments from this episode. To read more about how Toliver sets up her math trial project, click here. |
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