Here's my first mathematical activity I do with students in case anyone's curious

😱 I'm glad this resonated with many people! Here is the actual image I use. I took this at Fresno State.

I first see 4 sets of quincunx-es, so 20. But I notice there are 2 side-by-side overlaps, taking away 4, so 16.

Just changing from getting an answer to how you got your answer is so powerful. Once your students know you don't care so much about the answer, but rather the process, they begin to pay closer attention to how they solve things. There are 16 dots, how do you know?

I counted four sets of five and then subtracted the four shared dots.

I see 4 dots inside the red, and then add another 4 dots inside the blue. The total is 8 dots. Finally, I double it to get 16 dots as the answer.

@HaladayMath 4 rows of 3 + 2 rows of 2 = 16 dots

5 and 5 and 6 = 16

I love that you’re emphasizing the creativity in math, since it’s SO much more than just getting the right answer! My teachers always emphasized showing our work but that was in order to show that we did it “correctly,” rather than showing that we understood how it worked.

I saw two double 5 dominos, each with shared centre dots. so there is 10-2=8 for each domino, giving a total of 2(10-2) = 16.

i recognised the fact that it was squares with dots in the middle but to actually count them i basically just did what’s in green then doubled it to get to 16