Image of the Week: Teacher’s Favorite, Becky Heller

Teacher’s Favorite:

Becky Heller, 6th grade Teacher, Northbrook, IL, US

This week we offer another image selected by one of the members of our Teacher Advisory Board, who share some of their favorite activities and stories from their classrooms. Becky shares the third newsletter in this series:

Having used “How many do you see?” images, I anticipated that the students would first examine and discuss the image itself when I first shared this week’s image and asked, “About how many do you see?” In fact, I hoped that they would engage with the image, because then they would be hooked. I was correct: my 6th grade math students were drawn to its unusual aerial perspective and large scale. Comments ricocheted around the room:

• • It’s a race
  • I ran in our school district’s race last spring
  • They sure are crowded in there!
  • It’s not summer because the trees don’t have leaves
  • Why are so many people wearing green?

After a couple of minutes of sharing and exchanging ideas, there was a lull in the discussion. I jumped back in and reiterated the question. As expected, a few students came to the board and started counting each individual runner in the packed start corral. Others worked on the spectators. Students went into the discussion knowing that they would not get exactly the right answer. However, they soon realized that their approach would not even yield an “in the ballpark” answer.

I was ready. I suggested that they employ a more organized approach, and that was all they needed. I had projected the image on a white board, so students used a marker to divide the image up into a grid. Students self-assigned the grid sections and counted the spectators using that approach.

But what about the runners in the corral? How could the students use organization there? They decided to use the marker to make a narrow rectangle at the front of the packed section of the corral and count those runners. They then sliced the rest of the packed corral into rectangles of the same width, counted the rectangles, and multiplied the number by the runners they counted in the first section.

From there, I just sat back and watched the students work their magic. Soon, they tallied up their individual parts and determined an answer to “About how many do you see?”

Becky Heller

6th grade teacher, Northbrook, IL, US

What might your student do with this image?

To multiplicity, cheers!

Jen Munson and the multiplicity lab group