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Math nights bring families into the school
By Lyn Jerde
When a talking Barbie doll in the 1990s intoned, “Math class is tough,” thousands of heads, young and old, nodded in agreement.
Marie Hoernke, never a particular fan of Barbie, would nonetheless be one of those who’d assent to the doll’s assertion – if “tough” can be taken as a synonym for “challenging” and “stimulating.”
And, Hoernke would add, “Math is fun.”
Hoernke is a Title I teacher at Roche-a-Cri Elementary School in Arkdale, a K-5 school with about 82 pupils, which is part of the Adams-Friendship Area School District.
Twice a year, she hosts Math Family Nights, packing the school gymnasium with parents, pupils, siblings, grandparents and other relatives who participate in hands-on activities and games.
Hoernke’s efforts have earned her one of five national Dorothy Rich Awards, which consist of a $500 cash grant for educators who do an exemplary job of connecting students, schools and the community. The awards are named for Dr. Dorothy Rich, author and developer of the MegaSkills program and founder and president of the Home and School Institute.
The Math Family Nights represent a creative approach to applying the third standard of community involvement in schools, as outlined by Johns Hopkins University researchers: “Parents play an integral role in assisting student learning.”
“A long-term benefit of these events,” Hoernke said, “is that parents and children learn to work together when they encounter any problems at school. Teachers can’t do it all, and parents can’t do it all – and ultimately, the kids have to do their share, too.”
Mathematics, especially, is an area of academics that can intimidate many parents.
Like many teachers, Hoernke has had to deal with not only her pupils’ math anxiety, but also that of their parents.
There are parents, she said, who are reluctant or uncomfortable about being partners in their children’s mathematics education, because they don’t think they did well in math when they were in school, and because they perceive that today’s pupils are learning even more complex mathematics, at earlier ages.
To attract families to the Math Family Nights, Hoernke uses two forms of bait.
First, she introduces some of the Math Family Night games to the pupils in the classroom — which inevitably prompts the children to go home and say, “Mom and Dad, you’ve got to come to school with me and do this!”
Second, she offers a meal featuring locally baked pizza.
 Marie Hoernke, who believes in making math fun, uses plastic pegs as props for a counting exercise with 1st graders Ethan Olson and Audra Marquardt. Hoernke teaches at Roche-a-Cri Elementary School in Arkdale (Adams-Friendship Area School District). – Photo by Bill Hurley |
Before supper, families visit booths with math activities, such as the Fraction Kit — a selection of pieces of paper in varying colors, which illustrate the relationship between one-half, one-third, etc.
Then it’s time to eat. Hoernke gets the word out about upcoming Family Math Nights by letter, and requires replies, so that enough pizza can be ordered.
“I think it’s the pizza that gets them in the door,” she said.
But they stay for the games.
In past Math Family Nights, there have been three math games, each played for 20 minutes.
Hoernke is considering offering fewer games, played for longer time periods – partly because some games can be so much fun, people don’t want to stop playing.
One of these is the Tower of Thought.
The game is similar to the tabletop game Jenga, which requires players to remove pieces of wood from a tower without causing the tower to topple.
The Tower of Thought, however, is about 7 feet tall, and its pieces are 2-by-4 boards, with different colors painted on the ends to signify different point values.
Teams are usually composed of one family group, whose members decide together which board to pull from the tower when it’s their turn. Some boards have higher point values, but taking one of the high-point boards might cause the tower to fall, resulting in a loss of points.
Safety precautions are taken, Hoernke said, to ensure that the tower does not fall on anyone. But the potential clatter of tumbling boards keeps people so interested in the game, the participants may not realize they’re applying mathematical concepts such as addition and subtraction (keeping track of the number of points) and geometry (gauging the relative sizes and placements of the boards, and the effect on the whole tower if one of them is removed).
Afterward, families can take home their own copies of some of the games and activities.
Parent Cheri Ross said the Math Family Nights have become a tradition for her and her children, who are now ages 9, 10 and 13.
“This is a way of having fun with math, not having math as a paper-and-pencil exercise,” she said. “Second, it shows my children the importance of math in our lives. And third, it’s an opportunity for families to do something fun and constructive together.”
Not only has Ross taken home some of the games offered at Math Family Night – she’s used them as inspirations to point out to her children the everyday applications of what they learn in math class.
“When we go to the store, we get the kids to figure out if they’ll have enough money for something – figure out what’s 20% off $10, and factoring in a 5% sales tax,” she said. “Or, we work with grouping things by classification – forks, spoons, knives. Or in cooking, we figure out fractions of measurements.”
Hoernke said she gets many of her ideas for Math Family Night games from the book “Family Math” by Jean Kerr Stanmark, Virginia Thompson and Ruth Cossey, with illustrations by Marilyn Hill.
And, for many years, she got ideas and inspirations from her husband, Lynn Hoernke, a science teacher for Adams-Friendship 6th-graders who won numerous awards for his ability to link science teaching with such issues as the environment and water quality.
Lynn Hoernke died in a January skiing accident.
“He was a great teacher,” Marie Hoernke said. “And, oh, how he loved science!”
Lynn Hoernke and other teachers hosted Science Family Nights for middle-schoolers.
Like the Math Family Nights, they included activities and games, but there were additional features.
One was a “Question Quilt,” composed of laminated papers where participants could write any science-related question they wanted to ask.
Science teachers could answer those questions. But often, community members who had scientific knowledge and experience – and who attended the Family Science Nights with their children – could contribute their answers.
Another feature was door prizes contributed by the community. For every activity a person participated in at the Family Science Night, he or she received a ticket that would be thrown into a drawing for door prizes, donated by local businesses. Not only did this encourage participation in a variety of activities, Marie Hoernke said, it also engaged families in mathematics, as they calculated together the probability of winning prizes based on the number of tickets each person collected and the total number of tickets in the hopper.
“A lot of parents have said that these are better than the ordinary school science fairs,” Marie Hoernke said. “At science fairs, there is competition, and there are a lot of good projects, but only one or two can win a prize. At Family Science Night, everybody wins.”
Hoernke said schools can do any number of variations of the Math or Science Family Nights. In some communities, it might work better to have them more often, with a larger variety of less complicated games. In others, it might work better to have fewer, more intricate games played for a longer period of time.
But, to achieve success similar to that in Adams-Friendship, Hoernke recommends the following:
At one Math Family Night, Hoernke invited participants to classify teachers and staff according to the types of shoes they were wearing – athletic shoes in one group, dress shoes in another.
Then, the group took the flippant suggestion of one parent, that the staff be classified as “old teachers” or “young teachers.”
“I’m 47 – I’m not that old,” Hoernke laughed. “But I got put in the old group because I have a little gray in my hair.”
The best result of such activities, Hoernke said, is that parents feel welcome in school not just at the evening events, but all day.
“Being a rural community, people tend to get a little closer,” she said. “I see that parents love to come in to our school. They’re not afraid at all. They even feel comfortable coming into the classrooms.”
And, the Math Family Night activities take a little of the edge off any math anxiety the parents might have.
“You know one thing about this ‘Family Math’ book? There are no answers in the back,” Hoernke said. “You have to figure out the answers in these games.
“Especially in math, you learn there is often more than one right answer, or more than one way to solve a problem. When you work together, you say, ‘My way worked too, but I never thought of doing it your way before.’ ”
Posted March 1, 2000