Math Mats That Visit Your Community

Teachers use Math Mats to stimulate thinking and to give context to the math problem solving stories that children create.  This Fourth of July holiday I was down by the Fox River in our area and I started thinking about creating an unique set of Math Mats for our community. 

This math mat image stirs up images of a warm summer day when you get to go fishing down at the Fox River.

To differentiate, you could provide a word bank at the bottom of the page:

Word Bank: Fox River, summer, man, fishing, water, river bank, fish

Children could use the names of their classmates in their math stories.



Other images could be your fire station, your local mall, the principal’s office at your school, your lunchroom, and a picture of a car with the door open waiting for someone to enter.  Since the images are about your own community, it could compliment your Social Studies unit on “Our Community” or “Community Helpers.”

It could also go along with the writing worksheet that was shared at froggyfriendsfun.blogspot.com by Karen LeBlanc. Here is what a completed writing worksheet might look like.

Though this example does not show a response to work completed on a community math mat, just picture the drawing area filled with math equations and a picture too. The writing area would further explain the mathematical thinking.  I like that they have to edit their work, even for a math assignment. When the same form is used in both math and language arts, I think it helps the student to see the connection and that it's all about thinking...whether it is in the area of math or language arts.Thanks......Thanks Karen for the great writing sheet too.
Deborah