Our math night at an elementary school was a fantastic experience. We were able to use games we designed in numeracy class, and play with actual students and the their adults.
While it was an intimidating thought, especially as folks started to filter in for the evening, it wound up being a lesson for us all. Learners who had already started working on fractions avoided us like the plague… it was a touch hurtful but not unexpected. What was unexpected was the way younger learners took to the game. Even though they had not started to play around with equivalent fractions or comparing fractions they seemed to get the gist of it quite quickly.
It was amazing to sit there and see a learner quickly go from not really understanding what was going on but enjoying the ride, to being able to use the fraction bar chart to quickly check and see if they had the larger fraction compared to their adult. Seeing joy in math was quite refreshing for someone who suffers from math anxiety myself.
The gamification and competition with a trusted adult or older sibling was a great motivator and led to the hearty engagement we saw. At least in those learners who didn’t scamper away from us when they saw fractions on our poster. I would also say that using a laminated chart with bar fractions made it very accessible for learners to use a whiteboard marker or their fingers to compare fractions quickly. Being hands on and having movement built in with the dice seemed to really help too.
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