Image of the Week: Looking at the World Through the Lens of Mathematics

Looking at the World Through the Lens of Mathematics

Students spend the overwhelming majority of their time in mathematics answering questions posed by teachers, textbooks, worksheets, and task. But question posing – wondering mathematically – is a critical, yet underdeveloped, skill. Math is all around us all the time and children need to practice seeing the world through a mathematical lens. As you get ready to send students off for the summer, help them practice so that they might see math beyond your classroom.

We’ve discussed the value of Noticing and Wondering in the past: it positions students to craft the observations and questions, they begin to see mathematics that they might have otherwise overlooked, and wondering sparks curiosity that can lead to inquiry and investigation. So, take a look at this week’s image. The aerial perspective, one we don’t usually get to take in our daily walk through the world, can shake loose our tendency to ignore the ordinary. When looking at a city from the air, what do you notice? What do you wonder? You might see and ask:

• Plants, indeed a whole garden, on a roof that would be invisible from the street. And the array of tiles on the patio the plants surround. How big is that garden? How many tiles are there in that patio?
• Cars! Yellow cabs and cars of different colors moving in different directions on different streets. Cars parked on some streets more than others. How many cars are driving? How many are parked? Is this a busy time of day? How would we know? Why are cars parked on some streets more than others?
• The intersecting lines that mark the lanes for cars and bikes and the crosswalks for people, and some places where the lines have worn away. Do we need those lines? How do lines help us?
• People walking, waiting, and crossing. How many people are there? Where are they going?
• So many windows reaching up and around buildings! How would we even begin to count them? What’s behind those windows?

Not all of these questions lead clearly to a mathematical task, and they don’t need to. The point is to practice this muscle of seeing mathematics in the world – counting things, looking for structures and patterns, measuring how big, how far, how long, and asking what reasoning drives all of it. Let go of the need to assign and solve problems for a moment and just invite your students to look, think, and talk about what they see.

To multiplicity, cheers!

Jen Munson and the multiplicity lab group