Jump Rope and Hoops for Heart - School District 68

By Craig SpenceDavis Road Numeracy NightThe staff at Ecole Davis Road ElementarySchool in Ladysmith knew they had a winneron their hands with their Math is Fun Nightwhen the only note of criticism – if you can callit that – came from parents and students whodidn’t have enough time to visit all 36 stationsthat had been set up at the school one nightrecently. And, one student even asked his parentsif they could play math games on the nextfamily movie night.That was good news because the main goal of the event wasto engage students in numeracy activities and give parentssome ideas about how they could complement the effortsof the school.“This type of event with these types of activities is very engagingfor students,” said Davis Road Principal Doug English. Engagementand fun are like two sides of the same coin, as far as heis concerned, and it was evident the kids at the Math is Fun Nightdid make the connection.Some Numeracy Games You Can Try At Home:Big, Little and In-BetweenUsing a deck of cards, take out the King and Queen. Ace =1 and Jack = 0.For children in Kindergarten to Grade 2, draw out two cards and ask themwhich is the bigger number.For Grades 2-4, draw out three cards. Ask the child to arrange the threecards to make the biggest number possible and then to make the smallestnumber possible.For Grades 5-7, repeat the activities as above but with four or five cards.The Fifteen Game – for two playersYou need nine cards, printed with the numbers 1 to 9. You can makethese or use ordinary playing cards.To play the game, the cards are placed on the table between the twoplayers. Players take turns choosing a card (any card they like) from thepile. The winner is the first to have a set of three cards that add to 15.Great Math Board GamesBattleship, Set, Monopoly, Quirkle, SkipBo, Snakes and Ladders, YahtzeeNumber Guessing1. Choose a number within the range to be played, e.g. 1- 20, 1-100, 100-1000.2. The number is recorded on paper but not shown to the others.3. The other players then ask questions to help them to guess the number.4. Only yes/no questions can be asked.Encourage children to ask general questions to begin with, e.g. Is it even? Isit higher than 50? Instead of trying to guess the number, e.g. Is it 38?The evening started at 6 p.m., with student greeters handing outlanyards. At each of the stations, students received a card describinga specific activity. At the end of the night, students had lanyardsthey could take home, which had a number of different fun numeracyactivities that the students could do with their parents.Some of the games were ones you could buy in a store, and someof them were made up by the students and teachers themselves.There were also online math activities in the school’s computer lab.The evening showed parents and students that there are manyroutes to number literacy, and that learning happens in the home aswell as at school.“We wanted to involve the community with an event like thisand give them an opportunity to come in and see the kind of thingswe are doing in our classes,” English said. “We wanted to show themthat there are a lot of good numeracy type games out there.”Number literacy is not just a question of getting the book openand doing questions one to ten, he said. “You can learn math andnumeracy skills through different types of games as well. That wasan important idea the school wanted to get out to parents. ““When parents saw these games, they knew they already had afew of them at home, but didn’t realize there was math involved inthem,” English said. “Knowing that you can support your child innumeracy by playing games was an important message to parents.”12 - ConnectED - Spring 2011Davis Road Elementary Principal Doug English with students duringNumeracy Night.