We are delighted to welcome IES Plurilingüe Castro da Uz as another Partner School Plus to our network!
Teacher María Trastoi Rego gives us an insight into her many years of experience using MathCityMap in maths lessons at her school in Spain:
“IES Plurilingüe Castro da Uz, a MathCityMap Associated School, has been integrating this tool into its Mathematics teaching practice for several academic years. During this time, our students have participated as users of the platform, completing contextualized routes and tasks that enabled them to discover mathematics in their surroundings and apply curricular content to real-life situations.
During the current academic year, we took a further step in this journey. As part of the „Geometry in Space“ unit, the students in the 4th year of compulsory secondary education (15–16 years old) assumed an active role as content creators for the platform. Working in small groups, they identified elements of the school environment that could be explored mathematically, carried out measurements, designed problems related to both plane and solid geometry, and created complete MathCityMap tasks ready to be published on the platform.
As a result of this work, we created two routes on MathCityMap, which include the tasks designed by the students themselves. These routes are fully functional educational resources and demonstrate the students‘ ability to apply the knowledge they acquired to authentic problem-solving situations while also enriching the collection of resources available to the MathCityMap community.
This experience proved to be highly valuable from a pedagogical perspective. Moving from being users of the platform to becoming activity designers enabled students to develop a deeper understanding of mathematical concepts, strengthen their mathematical, digital, and scientific competences, improve their communication and teamwork skills, and increase their motivation by seeing that their work could be used by other learners.
Furthermore, this change in approach is fully aligned with the active learning methodologies promoted at our school. It supports project-based learning, encourages student autonomy, and strengthens the connection between mathematics and the real world.
Looking ahead to the next academic year, we plan to continue developing this initiative. While this first phase focused on designing tasks and routes within the school grounds, our next objective is to extend the project to the urban environment by creating new routes throughout different areas of our town. In this way, we aim to offer richer and more varied learning experiences that allow students to explore the mathematics found in architecture, urban planning, and other elements of public spaces.”
We are delighted to welcome IES Plurilingüe Castro da Uz into our growing network of Partner Schools Plus and look forward to more new trails from Spain!
The package with the official partner school badge and the MCM measuring instruments is on its way and we are looking forward to receiving more applications from all over the world.
All further information on the partner school programme and the requirements for application can be found both in the article on the first MCM partner school and on the homepage of our MaSCE³ project.
