If I had to pick one refrain that I hear from educators all over the country it’s How do we get families to come to our event? It’s obviously a common problem. One that I don’t have a definitive answer for. But I do have a few ideas that may help. Some of them are tried and true and a few I just discovered along the way. . Dinner + Math We all know that parents are busy people. Any…
I want you to imagine a world without math. What would that look like? Think about that for a moment. No math. How would you know what time it was? How would you know how much money you had? How would you bake a cake? How would you build a tree house? We learn math because it’s useful. It makes our lives easier. And it helps us understand the world we live in. Math is critical to the success of…well,…
Another fun Family Math Night Collaborative Project. Click the image to the left to get the lesson plan and to check out other great STEAM Projects. .
The Common Core State Standards in Mathematics is really emphasizing number lines in student work with numbers. So I thought I’d include one on a What Do You Notice? Poster at last night’s Family Math Night event. But in order to reflect both the primary and intermediate grades, not only did I include the counting numbers, but I marked the fourths, as well. Some students noticed the color pattern I used – even numbers are blue and odd are red….
So for this What Do You Notice? poster, I decided to tie in rectangular arrays with prime and composite numbers. That said, whatever math-y thing students notice is totally acceptable. For example, one student noticed that the “buildings” had square windows. Great. That’s a little bit of geometry. Another student noticed that each set of colored rectangles included the same number of squares. Again, great, as that required some counting and comparison. Just like the student who noticed that there are…