New club: A fraction of fun

The merry band of third through fifth graders seen walk­ing east­ward from Prospect Ele­men­tary School after class on Mon­days and Wednes­days may look like they’re head­ing off to get ice cream cones, but it’s just the Du Bois Frac­tion Club. Yes, a frac­tion club.

The brain­child of recently elected Ober­lin school board mem­ber Ken Stan­ley, the club is a com­pletely vol­un­tary pro­gram with the goal of mak­ing math fun. And the stu­dents do enjoy it, run­ning to get cards with frac­tion prob­lems on them and then run­ning again to deposit the cards in the cor­rect answer envelopes hung on a “num­ber line.”

Among the group’s other activ­i­ties are “Rush Hour,” a puz­zle that requires stu­dents to think ahead about how to maneu­ver slid­ing pieces on a large board to free up one piece, and “Frac­tion Bingo,” where they run from sta­tion to sta­tion to get stick­ers to com­plete their bingo cards.

“The run­ning is impor­tant,” Stan­ley said, “but it’s about more than who wins. It’s about attack­ing chal­leng­ing math prob­lems and then cel­e­brat­ing success.”

Prospect stu­dent Alana Mitchell wasn’t sure which aspect of the frac­tion club was her favorite.

“I really like doing the math, but I like the exer­cise, too,” she said before tak­ing a turn at Rush Hour. “And my dad thinks it’s cool.”

“Our stu­dents really enjoy and ben­e­fit from the inno­v­a­tive ways the Du Bois Frac­tion Club teaches math,” Prospect prin­ci­pal Jim Eibel said. “Because it doesn’t take place in a tra­di­tional class­room, they learn math with­out real­iz­ing they are in a for­mal math lesson.”

The Frac­tion Club meets either in Ober­lin College’s Hales Gym­na­sium or on the lawn in front of an OC build­ing. The crit­i­cal ele­ment is pro­vid­ing a large space for run­ning. Every ses­sion includes coaches, usu­ally Ober­lin Col­lege stu­dents and par­ents of Prospect stu­dents, who pro­vide assis­tance and supervision.

“I love this pro­gram because it’s a great path­way to learn­ing frac­tions,” said Michelle Vin­cent, a pro­gram coach and the mother of two stu­dents in the pro­gram – one an East­wood kinder­gart­ner who is allowed to attend because his mother and older sis­ter are there. “And they use what they learn. At home they’ll announce tri­umphantly that we’ve just eaten three-eighths of the pizza.”

Aldrume­cia Baker, an OC Bon­ner Scholar, was a coach at a recent out­door meet­ing of the Frac­tion Club.

“I like it because it involves kids,” she said, “and work­ing with them is refresh­ing. I’m not a math major, but I like this.”

Stan­ley is a com­puter sci­en­tist and con­sul­tant who began think­ing about how to help young stu­dents learn math when his daugh­ter, now a stu­dent at Brown Uni­ver­sity, was a child.

Posted by Scott Mahoney on Apr 19 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.