What can you do with a paperclip? What can you do with a grid? Answers to these questions lead participants to explore their own conjectures. This professional development session will help everyone turn their classroom into a Thinking Classroom, where students use Conjectures and Counterexamples to power genuine mathematical experiences.

This session is suitable for all ages, math circles and classrooms.

“When I grew up in the Soviet Union, all we used for math was grid paper. Grid paper leads to discovery.” This is how Tatiana Shubin, San Jose State University, begins her lesson demonstrating the myriad of wonderful math questions arising from a simple sheet of grid paper. Attempting to count all squares of any size on a limited grid will require participants to persevere, organize their thinking and construct viable arguments.