IPP @ Reading Week Projects

Reading Week has just gone by too quickly- don’t you agree?

This Reading Week, a group of IPP students went to Captain Cook Elementary in Vancouver to do a project called TOTEM (Teaching Others to Enjoy Math)! Sometimes Math can be a difficult subject for kids (and I have to admit that Math has never been my favorite subject), so this project was all about showing the elementary school kids how much fun Math can be!

Our group of 20 IPP-UBC students spent 3 days of our reading break doing this project at Cook Elementary. Having left elementary school around 15 years ago, we all admitted that being there made us feel like we were kids again! We went outside to play with the kids during recess, sat with them at their tiny tables during class activity time, and lined up with them to go back into their classrooms after lunch time. At the end of the 3 days, we were definitely sad to leave the school and all the wonderful kids we got to know. Many of us admitted that if we had not signed up for the project, we probably wouldn’t have been doing anything productive at home anyway. So next reading break, if you’re not going anywhere special, definitely join the Reading Week Projects! You won’t regret it- No one in our group did.

Wondering exactly how we actually made Math a lot of fun? Here are a couple of the activities we did with the kids!

-making color-patterned froot loop necklaces with kindergarten kids- to demonstrate how patterns of numbers can be used in crafts!

-playing Math Bingo- instead of the caller calling out numbers like “N-24”, we had the caller call out math equations and the kids would have to figure out which number on their bingo sheet was the answer to the equation that was called out

-marshmallow structures competition- we had kids build marshmallow structures only made out of cubes- the team that build the most creative/interesting structures won!

-Math trivia game- for the older students (who love some friendly competition), we made a Math Trivia game for them to play. It was designed to be a little bit like jeopardy, where each question was worth a certain number of points. but unlike jeopardy, every group got to answer a question. I have to admit. Some of the questions were HARD! Some of our UBC students didn’t even know the answers!

Are you smarter than a 5th grader?
What is the sum of all the interior angles of a triangle?
I have 3 faces and 2 edges. What shape am I?
Name all the prime numbers from 1-100.
The 5th graders got these questions correct. The question is- can you?

[skys]