In between question two and three, I paused my friends to give them my definition of a square which is "a parallelogram with four equal, straight sides and four interior right angles." After the definition was given I gave each friend the opportunity to recount and provide a final answer. Friend number one counted 36 squares and friend number two kept her answer at 43 squares. Over the duration of the task, neither friend felt like this was a trick question; instead, they were intrigued by it and was anxious to know how many squares were in the picture. At the conclusion of the activity, I revealed that I counted 39 squares and we watched the video below to find out the true final answer.
All in all, I learned that communicating math is going to be difficult. Nevertheless, teachers should try to present materials in various ways and make sure students have a clear understand of all the parts of an assignment.