Math Night

Sycamore Math Night

Wednesday, May 1, 2002

Classrooms have posted a short statement on this page about the activity that they presented on this wonderful, and well attended, eveing. Please note that pictures do not correspond with text but simply give a visual of different events around the auditorium.

	Room #10's Math Night activity featured an activity based on data analysis and statistics. We played GLOBE TOSS. A player tosses the globe and then records the data where your tight pinky lands; ocean or land. The data is displayed by drawing a circle on graph paper then dividing into fourth. Each time a player tosses, their data is placed into a section of the circle. As more data was collected, the statistic that 3/4 of the earth is ocean and 1/4 is land becomes apparent. It was fun to try to project how many times the globe would need to be thrown before the correct ratio of 1:4 was achieved.
Room 8's activity was Racing Bears. The game incorporates number sense, the addition operation, and mathematical reasoning. Room 8 students worked hard to become racing experts before math night and their dedication paid off as they showed others the finer points of the game.
	Mathematicians from Room 11 energetically explained a game they learned during a unit about the Number Line. The name of the game is "Save the Siberian Tiger." In the game, the players use "change cards" such as +3, -2, +1 to move their pieces along a playing board that resembles a number line. When the pieces land on certain squares of the game, players can save or lose Siberian Tigers. With the game, we explored the concept of positive and negative numbers, change, and net change. Students at Math Night seemed to enjoy the game and definitely saved big numbers of the endangered cats. Also at our booth were TILE MATH activity cards in which players used digit tiles to solve equations. We also had some papers showing function charts. All of these activities are part of algebraic number sense, concepts we start teaching in kindergarten. Thanks to many parents and students for supporting our work.
Room 7 offered four games from the strand for number sense. We called them Nimble with Numbers, which is from a Dale Seymour publication. The children helped with "Three in a Row" where clues (e.g., one more than a pair) are given to find a set of numbered dots. When three in a row are achieved on a card similar to a tic-tac-toe, the player calls out THREE IN A ROW! With number cards players also found true addition and subtraction equations on a sheet which they could take home with them. Other students demonstrated how to play "Claim All You Can" going up and down numbers on the 50 chart, using a spinner to indicate which way to go. Lastly, they showed how to play "High-Low-Spin", which involved strategizing the placement of double digit .numbers so that they would range from the lowest to the highest.
	Room 13 provided two games both dealing with number sense. "Uncover" had students roll dice and add the roll together. The answer is uncovered on the game board. The winner is the first person to uncover all the numbers on their board. This game provides addition practice as well as giving the children an opportunity experiment in probability as they begin to see that certain numbers have more addition combinations than others. The "I Spy a Number" game had children find a number (0-11) based on clues that read from cards. As children become more proficient at this game, the clues become more difficult. This is a great game for reinforcing math vocabulary.
For Room 1, Math Night was an exciting exploration. We had an estimating booth where people would cut a piece of string however long they thought the cantaloupe was round. Ross Mawhorter in Room 5 won. He received the cantaloupe and our congrats.
	The room six students presented the Mini-Metric Olympics. We had three stations: the Right-Handed Marble Grab, the Left-Handed Sponge Squeeze, and the Puff Ball Shot Put. For the Marble Grab, competitors would first estimate the weight, in grams, of a handful of marbles, then use a balance scale to determine the exact weight, and subtract to find the difference between the two. In the sponge squeeze, competitors would estimate how many milliliters of water they thought they could squeeze out of a sponge, then measure and find the difference. The same estimating procedure was again followed for the Puff Ball Shot Put. Competitors would estimate and measure the distance, in centimeters, that they could throw a small puff ball.
Room 12 had families involved in a probability activity where they were to figure out the colors of the ten tiles in a paper bag. They drew one tile at a time, recording the color, then putting it back in the bag without looking in the bag. This was repeated over and over with each member of the family taking turns until the family thought they knew the color of all ten tiles in the bag. Finally, the tiles were emptied out of the bag to see if they had figured out the colors!
	Room #3's game, Polygon-A-Gon, was created by the class so that visitors to our table would interact with polygons at many levels. After receiving a bag full of 30 different polygons, game players began by sorting them in whatever categories they decisions. From there, players began to calculate area and perimeter and develop formulas to express these concepts.
Room 9 had a lot of fun at the Math Activity Night. The children enjoyed teaching parents and other students how to play Race to 100, Race to 0 and Race to 50 Cents, all games having to do with place value.
	For Family Math Night, Room 4 decided to teach students and their families how to play the Finger Game. The Finger Game came to Sycamore via Outdoor School, where the cabin leaders taught sixth graders how to play. The sixth graders then taught it to their fifth and fourth grade friends. The Finger Game is a simple, fun game that requires only your fingers and your brain. A few of Room 4's students took different shifts at the booth. These students carefully explained and showed onlookers how to play the game. Using five digits from one had to represent 1-5 and 6-10, you point to your opponents hand and they must add the number you are sending to the number that is on their hand. The goal is to get your opponent to a multiple of 10 where they lose the use of that hand.
Room #17 presented Multiplication Tic - Tac - Toe! This game helps your multiplication tables, as well as helps your strategic skills. By multiplying two numbers, you can move to a spot. I assure you, that everybody who played this game loved it. This game is fun and educating. I loved it! -Nafeesah Andrabi, Rm 17
	Visitors to Room 5's area exercised their spatial intelligence by attempting to construct triangles, squares, trapezoids, rectangles, parallelograms and other polygons using from two to seven tangram pieces for each geometric shape. They recorded their findings by drawing the shape in the appropriate box of a matrix if they were able to build it. One participant created each shape using all seven pieces. No one constructed a two-piece rectangle!
Room 2's math night was a success. We played Buzz with parents and students together. If you are not sure what buzz is I'll explain. It is a math game where students stand in a row and count off, 1.2.3 etc.. Thew object is to not say a multiple of 7, Instead the player is suppose to say the word buzz. We had great fun with the parents. The best was when two parents squared off and went as high as 56 until they got jumbled and buzzed out.