Challenge Math: Exciting Mathematical Enrichment ...

Challenge Math:

Exciting Mathematical

Enrichment Explorations for

Elementary Students

for my family:

Stephen, Sam, and Maggie

Introduction for Teachers

Why Do Challenge Math Groups?

Children learn best when they are taught at (or slightly above) a level they are

ready for. As soon as a classroom of children has more than one child in it, there

are a range of abilities, not just in mathematics, but in everything.

Enrichment pullout groups for the children who are ready for more advanced topics

in math have many benefits:

? The children studying the advanced topics get to see mathematics as exciting,

vibrant, and creative instead of thinking that math is always something that

requires memorization, speed, and no creativity. In actuality, that¡¯s the exact

opposite of what the study of mathematics is all about. In weekly pullouts with

interesting, meaty questions, the students come alive and look forward to ¡°playing math games¡± (where they¡¯re actually learning complex ideas and stretching

their brains) every week.

? Having students work in groups (as opposed to handing your bright students a

workbook to work on when the classroom material isn¡¯t challenging enough) with

other children ready for advanced material shows them that mathematics is not

a solitary discipline -- mathematics is exciting and vibrant and creative and fun.

Students learn that being good at mathematics is not a dirty little secret to

hide from their peers, but that others in their class also find comfort in symmetry and joy in patterns.

? The students who are not ready for the advanced topics can get more instruction time at their own level with a different parent volunteer who works with

them on what they are ready to learn.

? The lucky parents who get to direct a challenge math group get to feel useful

and connected to their children¡¯s lives. They¡¯ll learn the names and faces and

personalities of their child¡¯s classmates. And most importantly, they will show

their child how important his/her education is to them. Children will take more

seriously what their parents show by example are important.

? You will have an hour each week to focus on the child or children who you think

needs more attention.

How to Use This Book

Encourage your parent volunteers to read the Introduction to this book, perhaps

give them some suggestions about what you will be teaching in class, but after that,

give them some latitude to decide which lessons best fit their own interests and

that of their group. Encourage the volunteers to USE this book: encourage them

to make notes in the book of what they thought worked or how they might change

the lesson for the next year. The book will become more useful to you as you acquire notes and ideas of the parents of your students over the years.

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You might want to pick out a quarter¡¯s worth of lessons at the beginning of the

term, and take all the materials needed by your parent volunteers for those lessons and put them in a box so that when the parent picks up the children in the

classroom, it¡¯s a habit for one of the students to take the box with the group. This

keeps pencils (and the games that can result from a group of students carrying

pencils) and other distractions from hindering the beginning of the lesson, and allows the parents to bring out supplies at the right moments.

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Introduction

The Carleton College Challenge Mathematics Curriculum Project

When my children were in our local public elementary school, their classrooms were

a typical mixture of abilities and interests; some students could reliably count to

100 or read simple sentences in kindergarten, whereas other students were struggling to perform these tasks a year, or even two, later. Whole classrooms were

not differentiated by ability, but instead there were regular, weekly pull-outs for

reading and mathematics which would group kids more by what they were developmentally prepared for. Those weekly Challenge Math pull-outs were often run by

parent volunteers, many of whom, including myself, had not been trained in teaching

mathematical concepts to elementary school students, and were not often given a

curriculum to follow. My own background in mathematics, however, made it easier

for me to come up with ideas for the content of the lessons, I would imagine, than

for some of the other parents.

After eight years of volunteering in the elementary school while my children

passed through it¡¯s doors, I was pondering one day what the college mathematics

majors in my classes who were interested in education could do for a senior capstone experience. That¡¯s when the Carleton College Challenge Mathematics Curriculum Project was born. For each of the next two years I led four senior math

majors through this service-learning curriculum project. Each Carleton student

went to Bridgewater Elementary each week and ran a 45-minute Challenge Math

group, with five or six students (the same group of students for the whole year),

and then wrote up lesson plans for the activities. By the end of each year, they

had created a book of lesson plans from which parent volunteers could run future

Challenge Math groups.

This is a compilation of their work in large part, with some of my favorite projects

from my own Challenge Math groups thrown in.

What is Challenge Math?

Simply one type of student enrichment program in mathematics, Challenge Math

offers to students a glimpse of mathematics as a subject they won¡¯t recognize ¨C

not adding or multiplying, or recognizing shapes, but asking questions both big and

small and reasoning logically, an opportunity to work at their individual developmental level with like-minded peers, a chance to see mathematics as fun, interesting,

lively, and useful, and a preview of the light at the end of the arithmetic tunnel.

These Challenge Math groups do not need to serve only the brightest students in

the classroom; they can serve any group of like-ability students. You want to work

with like-ability students so that there is no one student answering all the questions or directing the others; you want to create a forum for better conversation

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