Math Fair

I really enjoyed seeing the kids' math fair projects. I could tell a lot of them put in a great deal of time and work. Hearing them try to explain both their games and the math behind each game was very exciting and delightful. Giving students the opportunity to engage in math in such a way was something I really appreciated. I think the fact that the students had the autonomy to produce whatever game they wanted made them more engaged in their learning and ultimately produced a variety of very creative and fun games. I also loved how many family members of the students were at the math fair, it gave students a sense of pride when showing their parents or relatives their work and I saw some kids beaming with excitement as their parents played their games. Overall I think it was a lovely event and I could tell the kdis were very proud of their work.

There are a few suggestions I could make. I could tell many of the kids were nervous explaining the math behind their games, maybe because they were unsure of their results, so possibly giving students the opportunity to explain the math to the teacher in a proposal might be useful for students. I'm not sure if they'd already done this, but I think it could be useful. It could also give the teacher the opportunity to help students work out any kinks, which could be beneficial to the students' confidence and presentation of the math concepts. I also know many of the students had a great deal of probability calculations to compute for their poster boards, but when they were asked to explain the math many of them froze and seemed to forget how they calculated it in the first place. So maybe having them show some work on a different part of their poster board might be useful for the students and the observers. It wasn't that they didn't know how to do the math, I just found that that students couldn't re-explain their math when just looking at a long list of outcomes. So if they showed their work for at least one question, they might be able to remember their process better and hence explain it better, ultimately strengthening their learning experience. I believe showing work is an essential part of mathematics education at a young age.