Classroom, Students and Community

Michigan State University

TE 801: Professional Roles and Mathematics Teaching Practice: Fall 2014
By Kendra Asher
Students Community Experiences with Out-of-School Mathematics

In order to get to know the community my students live in, I visited Zap Zone in Lansing. This
fun center has mini golf, an arcade, laser tag, inflatable jumping structures, bumper cars, and
more. The laser tag arena has walls, obstacles, windows and more to play around. It caters to
many age groups and demographics. Families bring their children, high school students come on
the weekends with their friends, college students take their minds off of school and fundraising
events take place. I learned that although it may seem like a place only for children, adults enjoy
themselves as well. Many seem to cherish the ability to have fun and let loose. I also learned
many races visit Zap Zone. There was a mix of races, which actually surprised me. I am not sure
why, but I was expecting it to be mostly white people. There were also many socioeconomic
groups there as indicated by the attire and my previous knowledge. As a result I learned that I
have preconceived notions of these classes in a manner that I can take visual and behavioral cues
to determine ones class. Zap Zone is a place in the community for people to have fun, bond,
celebrate, and is a vital resource in the community to meet these needs. Since my students
enjoyed going to Zap Zone, this tells me they value fun, excitement, celebration, competition,
and novelty experiences.
Zap Zone exhibited many examples of mathematical knowledge and concepts. Workers
there have to count the number of tickets a customer brings to the counter for a prize. They have
to know the many different combinations of prizes the value of tickets allow. In preparation for
prizes, children count their tickets to determine how many more they need to get the prize they
want. Zap Zone sells pizza and the company must set prices for their food. They will look at how
much the ingredients cost, the cost of labor, and other capital item costs when determining the
price. The manger or owner sets the price after calculating these factors. When I talked with
customers there they mentioned using math to tell their children how much longer they would be
staying there. They took the time they planned to leave and subtracted the current time from it.
Some also mentioned using rounding and estimation, and did the math in their head. Unlike
when I talked to my students, the adults had an easier time giving examples of using math. While
visiting Zap Zone, I learned about how math is used in the community, how adults differ in their
ability to locate math outside of school, and the various uses of math by all patrons there.
Zap Zone provides the opportunity to create math tasks that are personal and meaningful
(Civil & Khan 2001). These tasks increase student participation and understanding of the math
concepts. A high-level math task inspired by Zap Zone is as follows:

The manager of Zap Zone wants to redesign the laser tag arena for customers to
have more fun. The arena measures 30 feet by 30 feet. Your goal is to place
obstacles and record where they will go with coordinates while mapping on a
coordinate plan. Some rules to follow are: each obstacle must allow the flow of
people a minimum of 5 feet to walk and obstacles may be placed next to each
other. Obstacles you can use include walls (1ft x 2ft), tunnels (5ft x8 ft), barrels
(1ft x 1ft), pillars (2 ft x 2ft), and cubes (1ft x 1ft).
This is a high level task because it has no prescribed way to solve the task (Smith & Stein
2011). There are many solutions to the problem. In addition, to solve the task students may use
manipulatives, diagrams or symbols which Smith and Stein explain indicate a high level task
(2011). In order to solve the task and design a layout, they must use their prior knowledge and
experiences (Smith & Stein 2011). This task relates to what I have gathered about Zap Zone and
the community because it utilizes a similar experience of playing laser tag. I learned that the
community enjoys having fun and although I did not discuss with customers at Zap Zone about
the obstacles, using a coordinate plane to char the obstacles is an everyday experience. We map
cities and malls, and students have experience with looking at maps. This task connects their
community knowledge, past experiences with maps, and the math concepts of coordinate planes
to provide students with a high level math task. In conclusion, my visit to the community
location of Zap Zone provided me insights into the community and the opportunity to create a
high-level math tasks student can relate too.

Bibliography
Civil, M., & Khan, L. H. (2001). Mathematics Instruction Developed from a Garden Theme.
Teaching Children Mathematics , 400-5.
Smith, M. S., & Stein, M. K. (2011). 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics
Discussions. Reston, Virginia: The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, INC. .