Drawing on Math
Examples of Student's Math Drawings
A picture is worth a 1,000 words. Here are some examples of student classroom drawings collected from elementary and middle school classrooms across the United States. Click on the images to see the full drawing.
Galleries of student drawings used in research:
Time to Know Digital Teaching Study (New York, NY)
Berkshire Wireless Learning Initiative Study (Western MA)
Lilla G. Frederick 1:1 Laptop Study (Boston, MA)
Data! Data! Data!" he cried impatiently. "I can't make bricks without clay."
—Sherlock Holmes in The Adventure of the Copper Beaches (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1892)
Over a yearlong partnership with the MAISD Regional Mathematics and Science Center, researchers helped teachers collect and code nearly 2,000 student drawings from 10 Western Michigan elementary schools. Classrooms and schools voluntarily participated in this math drawing exercise, so these results may not be applicable to other school settings or populations. Indeed, the drawings shown here were initially collected and coded to spur reflection with individual teachers around teaching math. However, through the use of a quantitative coding rubric, large numbers of drawings can be analyzed for trends and patterns within and across school communities.
In the two data visualizations below, you can access and further explore the Western Michigan math drawings across participation grade levels (K-5).
Figure 1: MAISD Study wide results showing the percent of drawing with different coded characteristics
Figure 2: Types of math depicted across grade levels
Table 1: MAISD student participation rates for Drawing on Math in 2017/2018
| Grade K | Grade 1 | Grade 2 | Grade 3 | Grade 4 | Grade 5 | Grade 6+ | All Grades | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| School 1 | 108 | 20 | 47 | 175 | ||||
| School 2 | 51 | 50 | 71 | 89 | 261 | |||
| School 3 | 72 | 79 | 151 | |||||
| School 4 | 77 | 25 | 102 | |||||
| School 5 | 21 | 21 | ||||||
| School 6 | 21 | 29 | 59 | 20 | 39 | 20 | 21 | 209 |
| School 7 | 22 | 22 | 19 | 54 | 117 | |||
| School 8 | 54 | 106 | 83 | 84 | 327 | |||
| School 9 | 93 | 109 | 110 | 128 | 440 | |||
| School 10 | 53 | 53 | ||||||
| All Schools | 114 | 405 | 429 | 316 | 341 | 183 | 68 | 1856 |
Muskegon Area Intermediate School District (MAISD)
