The Coreguaje Maloca: how a school in Caquetá turned an indigenous structure into the center of its math class

In 2000, as Colombia's <strong>Ministry of Education</strong> launched the pilot phase of a project to bring new computational technologies into the math curriculum, the <strong>Juan Bautista La Salle school</strong> in Florencia, Caquetá, received Texas Instruments graphing calculators as part of that rollout. Instead of using them only to work through textbook exercises, the school's math teachers gave their ninth-grade students a different challenge: build and model, with that technology, an element of their own region's cultural identity.

The result was <strong>the Coreguaje Maloca</strong>: the geometric reproduction — first by hand, then with a graphing calculator and <strong>Cabri</strong> dynamic geometry software — of the maloca, the traditional communal house of the Coreguaje indigenous people of the Colombian Amazon. What began as a single grade's project grew, over the years, into a full pedagogical progression from first to eleventh grade, and by 2004 into a teacher-training strategy the school presented to the entire network of math teachers in the municipality of Florencia. Texas Instruments and Cabri — the two core technologies behind the project — are, today just as in 2000, brands Districalc has brought to Latin American classrooms since 1981.

The challenge: teaching spatial thinking with cultural meaning, not just textbook exercises

The pilot phase of the Ministry of Education's New Technologies project aimed for something more ambitious than handing out calculators: it wanted technology to change how geometry was taught. At Juan Bautista La Salle, the math teachers decided the best way to do that was to anchor the learning of <strong>spatial thinking and geometric systems</strong> in something their students already knew and valued: the sociocultural environment of their region, in southern Colombia's Caquetá Amazon.

So they gave the ninth-grade students of the year 2000 a concrete challenge: build and model, with the computational tools they had just received, an element of the region's cultural identity. The choice wasn't arbitrary — it grew out of contact with members of the Coreguaje people and with the maloca, that indigenous community's traditional communal dwelling.

From the Orteguaza River to the indigenous reserve: documenting the maloca on-site

Before building anything on a calculator, the project team — teachers and student researchers — traveled to the <strong>Agua Negra Indigenous Reserve</strong>, in the municipality of Milán, Caquetá, to document the Coreguaje maloca firsthand. They set out from Puerto Arango and traveled up the Orteguaza River to the reserve, where they made direct contact with members of the community, who shared the cultural meaning and construction details of the maloca with them.

That fieldwork became a mural at the school: a visual record of the maloca, of the Amazonian environment that is home to the Coreguaje people, and of the calculators that, as the teachers themselves put it, "brought that structure to life" inside the classroom. From then on, the challenge for students was clear: reproduce the maloca, but in modular, geometric form.

From hand drawing to dynamic geometry: a progression from first to eleventh grade

Before touching a calculator, the youngest students built the maloca by hand. In first, second and third grade, children approached the Coreguaje maloca through basic drawing and collage techniques, first building a clear visual idea of the geometric figure. In fourth and fifth grade, now using conventional tools — compass, ruler, set square — the construction became more precise, building fine motor skills and preparing students for the next step: calculators and computers.

That transition — from building by hand to building with technology — wasn't just a change of tools. It aimed to make sure that, by the time students reached the upper grades, they already had a solid conceptual base that let them tap into the potential of dynamic geometry, instead of using the calculator as a black box.

Six constructions, one maloca: Euclidean geometry, perspective and 3D coordinates on the calculator

In high school, the goal scaled up. Building on the skills students had already developed with graphing calculators and computers, the project asked them to virtually reproduce the Coreguaje maloca using six distinct geometric procedures, each exploring a different branch of geometry with Cabri and Texas Instruments calculators:

From that same structure, students managed to extract up to five distinct polygons — a triangle, a rectangle at the base, another polygon at the door, a parallelogram on the roof and a trapezoid on another section of the roof — showing that, as one of the project's teachers put it, "it looks like a drawing, but in that construction, in that simulation, a whole set of geometric objects is at work."

The project on video: two recordings of the full process

The project was documented in a two-part video showing the fieldwork at the indigenous reserve, the grade-by-grade pedagogical progression, and the students themselves explaining each of their geometric constructions in front of the calculator:

Original video record of the project, published by Juan Bautista La Salle school: Part 1 · Part 2.

Lesson Study: from a classroom project to a municipality-wide strategy

On July 4, 2004, the project scaled up. Juan Bautista La Salle school presented, at an open forum for math teachers across the municipality of Florencia, a pedagogical strategy called <strong>Estudio de Clase</strong> (Lesson Study): a structured format for taking the Coreguaje Maloca experience — and the spatial-thinking, geometric-systems approach behind it — beyond the classrooms where it began.

The Lesson Study format included presenting the lesson and the problem situation, the construction work by participating students, a verbal and written report, reflection from the observing teachers, commentary from an invited expert and, finally, validation of the lesson — an explicit exercise in identifying strengths, weaknesses and general observations about the proposal.

Texas Instruments and Cabri in Latin American classrooms since 1981

The Coreguaje Maloca is, above all, a project built by the teachers and students of Juan Bautista La Salle school, developed as part of the pilot phase of Colombia's Ministry of Education New Technologies project. But it's also, since the year 2000, an early and very concrete example of what the tools <strong>Districalc</strong> has brought to Latin American classrooms since 1981 are for: <strong>Texas Instruments</strong> graphing calculators and <strong>Cabri</strong> dynamic geometry software, today pillars of Districalc's math portfolio, were the technology that made it possible for a classroom in the Colombian Amazon to turn an indigenous structure into a full lesson in Euclidean geometry, perspective and spatial coordinates.

More than two decades later, that same combination — graphing calculators, dynamic geometry software and a pedagogical approach that connects math to each student's cultural environment — is still the basis for how Districalc supports schools across the region today in teaching spatial thinking and geometric systems.