AIMC 2024 Spring Break Tour

Donna Fernandez writes:

Tatiana and I were like rock stars on tour across the Navajo Nation and Hopi tribe. We had our tour schedule lined up for each day to do mathematical classroom visits. The tour consisted of eight different schools and spanned 4th grade through 12th grade. Tatiana took students on a journey with Bluebird to a far away planet to investigate a mathematical problem using boundaries and area. Check out BMC Issue #64 Shapes and Curves. We were so thrilled to be back in the classroom with our Indigenous students exploring similarities and differences between a Navajo rug and a Kyrgyz rug. They recognized immediately the geometric shapes of the Navajo rug and found the curves used in the Kyrgyz rug to be different but interesting. This led to exploring quarter-curves on a coordinate grid. We found that the fourth graders were more creative in coming up with pathways. Our tour also served a purpose to get the word out about our Math Camp this summer at Navajo Prep. We already have students signing up. Yay!

It was a great time to connect with Indigenous math teachers to show them the Bluebird Math Circle newsletter, and how it can be integrated in the classroom.