On the day before school started, I was asked to teach a last period class for remedial students that would help them improve their math skills in addition to the regular grade 8 math class they already were taking. I welcomed the opportunity and it has been a good experience this fall. But there was no room assigned for the class that first week, so students were told to meet me at the office and together we walked outside to the woods behind the school. I handed them meter sticks and clipboards, told them to find a partner and sent them to measure trees in the woods. They were to find the d.b.h. or diameter breast height. This gave us some wonderful data for reviewing measures of central tendency such as mean, median, mode and range. Using all the data, we were able to make some generalizations about the trees in the forest.
Currently, my husband is in a science/math forestry unit with his seventh and eighth graders. The extension forester comes in and they have been doing some incredible explorations that have captured the students' interest and strengthened their math skills and science knowledge at the same time. They are measuring trees, calculating board feet and projecting the dollar amount that various wooded areas are worth.
At this time of year when the autumn colors are so vibrant, it's nice to find so much math in the trees!
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