Task of the week: New paint for the dove of peace

Angela Karl, a math teacher at the Lichtenberg School in the south of Darmstadt, recently created the task “New paint for the peace dove“, which we would like to present to you today as the task of the week. The goal of the task is to determine the amount of paint in liters that would be needed to give the dove of peace in the schoolyard a new coat of paint.  Angela Karl reports on her task and her experience with MathCityMap so far in the following.

How did you come across the MathCityMap project? How do you use MCM?

I got to know MathCityMap at the ErLe Day at the Goethe University Frankfurt. Together with a colleague, I attended a workshop on MathCityMap. In the workshop, we were able to gather theoretical basics about “outdoor mathematics” as well as our own first experiences with the app. The workshop made me very enthusiastic about MathCityMap, because it is a low-threshold way to encourage students to see the world through math glasses.

Then, as I walked around my school grounds, I immediately noticed a few places where you can create exciting tasks. So far, I have only used MCM once in the E-Phase, in order to awaken the memory of various topics of the middle school in an interesting way. My students were very enthusiastic about it. I plan to continue using MCM in different grades in the future.

What can learners take away from completing the task?

Since the dove of peace is not a simple geometric shape, students must first develop a plan to approximate the surface as closely as possible. It is a good idea to break down the figure into several geometric shapes. There are a variety of ways to do this, and the results will vary in accuracy depending on how you do it.

The students have to manage their time well, since they lose a lot of time measuring if they divide the dove into too many small sections. Since it is not the area of the dove that is required, but the amount of paint needed, they still have to convert their result correctly at the end.