From: Jeanne (for Teacher2Teacher Service)
Date: Feb 23, 2001 at 19:07:29
Subject: Re: Math and Community

Hi Ryan,

I thought you might be interested in looking at a different view of "math in
the community":  a math trail.  I am creating a small math trail for my
geometry students where teams of students will go to various places on my
campus and solve math problems and/or answer questions related the stations
I select ahead of time.

Some examples of stations I have done in the past--

1.  Our tennis courts need to be repainted.  I gave the students a copy of a
paint label and students found the cost of a gallon of paint.  I asked them to
use their measuring tools to determine the quantity and cost of paint needed
to paint the courts according to the recommendations on the label.

2.  I asked the students to measure the height of our flagpole.

3.  I gave the students a bucket and asked the students to compute how many
buckets filled to capacity are needed to fill one of the garbage cans in the
cafeteria.  (The can and the bucket they used were clean.)

Larger scale math trails have been created all over the country.  Here is a
webpage for the National Math Trail Organization.

http://www.nationalmathtrail.org/

Hope this helps!

 -Jeanne, for the T2T service

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