Initial feelings after reading the question:

• Seemed like a long question and it was confusing at first. We had to read it out loud and several times.
• Fun and interesting even though it was long.
• Hard because we did not recognize this type of question as a math question. Where was the math? We thought that math was just numbers to add, subtract, mulitply or divide.
• Many parts of the question had to be discussed separately. We were glad that we had a group to work with.
• Looked hard but once we read it through several times and broke it into small pieces of what we knew, it was easier.
• We were glad that we were able to work in a group and talk about the problem with other classes.
• This way of doing math was like when we brainstorm when we are writing stories.
• It seemed hard because there were so much information and so we decided that we needed a plan and so we highlighted the information that was the most important to us
• It was fun but there was also a lot of hard work to be done. The first was to talk about the question and debate the issues inside the question. We never thought about math at first. No one talked about adding or subtracting or anything about math.
• Is this even a math question? It sure doesn't look like a math question. Why is it called a math question?
• This question looks like we are never going to be done.
• We like this question because it is a story. We wish that all math could be stories. It would be more fun because you would always be trying to understand the story and doing math at the same time. It would be more about understanding than just doing.
• We didn't see this problem as a "math" problem but more of a "landscaping" problem which is more like a career or a mission to solve. This is more like real life.
• This question will require a different type of thinking. With our other math questions we always started with what we knew and what we needed to know and it was all about numbers. This question was not about numbers although we had to work with some of the numbers to understand the question and then find "solutions" not to solve it.
• Overwhelming at first but once the "math" was figured out the rest fell into place.
  

• We had quite a discussion about how does a creek flow. Would it be straight or would it meander along the property. How were we going to represent this is a scale drawing.
• The problem seemed really "big" and hard to visualize but as we worked on it daily it became clearer. Each one of us used the strategy that helped us to visualize the question: some of us drew pictures, some of us went right to graph paper and to scale, some of us wanted to understand the size of the area and had to convert it to a different unit, some of us just talked to try to understand the question.
• We liked being able to keep going back to the question each day and come up with new ideas.
• There seemed to be so many different ideas that we could come up with.
• We did not realize that you could be so creative when you were doing Math. We thought that this was saved for writing stories.
• One student’s response was "Math is Life". We see it and use it every day. We didn't realize that we would be doing math when we were talking about keeping the area as natural as we could.
• We had to come up with a way to make the numbers manageable. They looked so big at first that we thought we could not do the problem. After we broke it down to scale or into another method of measurement it was not so difficult.
• The hardest part was visualizing the size of the lots and the size of the land to be developed. We knew what area was but acutally visualizing the size of the area was tough.
• We discovered that the area did not have to take a rectangular or square shape although it was the easiest shape to work with because everything seemed to fit together. Triangular shapes would also have worked because they are just half of a square or a rectangle. We never tried circular shapes because most of the lots that you see today are not in this shape.

• Interesting and challenging and it took a long time but it was always exciting and it never got boring
• Overall the majority of the class liked the math problem and the way that we could work as a group at our own school and also with another school. We really liked the project. It would have been great it we could have had a discussion with the other schools that was going on at the same time.
• Brainstorming was an important part of doing the project. It was a different type of brainstorming because we usually talk about whether we are going to add or subtract and this was more like talking about the issues of the question before we actually began to make a plan that did involve adding or subtracting or multiplying or dividing or fractions or scale etc..
• We had to use a lot of our math to solve this question. We did area and shapes and fractions and perimeter and scale. We don't usually do all of these different types of math at the same time. It was neat to see how you can use all different types of math at the same time.
• We liked that there were a lot of "right" answers and not just one right answer. It made you think and talk to the members of your group to try to get them to see what your idea was. When we talked the understanding became clearer because we had to keep explaining ourselves.
• This math question really made you think. When we do math we don't always have to "think" so much all we have to do is calculate.
• We liked working with a team to do math.
• Some of the parts were frustrating but it made it made finding a solution much more rewarding.
• To go through life you will need math. It is in places that you don't realize. We are looking forward to doing this type of math again. Other math questions we always had a hard time doing them. We didn't read the question we just "did the math" and we really didn't understand it but we always got an answer and so we knew that we were done. I used to hate math and now I don't.

• It was fun to talk to other students and work with them using email.
• We spent our time talking about math and really never thought about asking personal questions.
• We learned patience as we had to explain parts of the questions that we thought were easy because we knew the question. It was our job to keep the conversation going between the schools.
• We learned how to send email, reply to email and send attachments.
• We also learned the proper etiquette of the internet.