Let's Read Math

Candace Davison reported on Let’s Read Math summer activities in the State College Branch of AAUW. This summer, the branch organized three Let’s Read Math workshops for elementary-age children. The workshops were co-sponsored with the Schlow Library and Discovery Space children’s museum. Programs were held on June 12, June 19, and July 17. A total of 79 children participated, evenly divided
between girls and boys.

At the library, children heard a math-related story followed by a short interactive math activity. They received a free “pass” to the museum, about a block away. At Discovery Space, they met again and the lesson was further embellished through interactive hands-on activities.

The three featured books were:

• Grandfather Tang’s Story by Ann Tompert – Children learned about polygons and made tangram pictures.

• How Big is a Foot? by Rolf Myller – Children made linear measurements of objects in the room, and discovered how the “foot” became a standard unit of measure.

• One is a Snail, Ten is a Crab by Ann Pulley Sayre and Jeff Sayre – Children counted the number of feet on different animals and made up number sentences.

The involvement of the museum is a new feature of the branch’s Let’s Read Math outreach. Last summer there were three sessions at the library, with about 50 students taking part. The featured books were The Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns, How Much is 1000? by Helen Nolan, and Measuring Penny by Loreen Leedy. Partnering with the museum was a new idea for 2012, and all agreed this was a positive experience with good results.

Mastery of fractions and early division is a predictor of students’ later success with algebra and other higher-level mathematics, based on a study done by a team of researchers led by a Carnegie Mellon University professor.

That means more effective teaching of the concepts is needed to improve math scores among U.S. high school students, which have remained stagnant for more than 30 years.

The study, called “Early Predictors of High School Mathematics Achievement,” was published recently in Psychological Science, and the lead researcher was Robert Siegler, a professor of cognitive psychology at CMU whose work focuses on children’s mathematical and scientific thinking.

Click here to read the whole story.

On Wednesday March 28, volunteers from AAUW Makefield visited the Get Set after school program in Trenton, NJ.  Claire Passantino, Marna Matthews and Laurie Hagan acted out the story of “The King’s Commissioners.”  One student played the “princess” and delighted everyone by explaining how to count by 2’s, 5’s, and 10’s to reach the same total!

Children used Froot Loops to make necklaces in counting patterns, and to search for patterns in a hundred chart. Approximately 25 students from grades K-4 participated in the program. Volunteers  from Lawrenceville School and Princeton University helped the children with their math.

The following Wednesday, each student received a magnetic hundred chart to take home. The charts are used to practice skip counting, and to do mental math – adding and subtracting two-digit numbers.  The center received four copies of the book to use for group reading.

The Let’s Read Math outreach of AAUW Makefield is funded by Bristol Myers- Squibb. Workshops have taken place in Mercer County, NJ and Bucks County, PA.