Making Math Fun for All
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:
- Each event must start and end on time, to show
respect for families’ cramped schedules.
- Keep in mind the varying skill levels of children.
In Roche-a-Cri, for example, some Family Math Nights are just for pupils
in one grade or a few grades, while others are for the whole school.
The skill level of the children participating determines the activities
offered.
- Invite the whole school faculty and staff,
including the principal.
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