Released 10/28/2009

Getting their minds, and hands, on math

By Andrew Seguin

“This is like Field Day for math,” said Tracy Ehrlich ’83. She was speaking to a group of Class 4 girls who were wearing various numbers and decimal points as sandwich boards. The students weren’t hawking discount suits; they were participating in Minds On, a special math program brought to Chapin by former Chapin teachers.

The program, which was designed for Classes 4 and 5 and took place over two days, is special because it asks students to complete a variety of tasks that involve math’s practical applications. Minds On is really about hands-on learning.

“We use numbers to talk about practical things every day,” Ms. Ehrlich, one of the Minds On mentors, said to the students. She had them list a variety of ways that numbers were involved in their daily lives, from zip codes and telephone numbers to birthdays and telling the time. And the sandwich boards? Well, that was so the students could see, by acting it out, just how big of a number one billion is. With each student wearing a one, a zero or a comma, it took 17 girls to put together the numeral for one billion.

The students did much more than enact numbers, though. “We’re doing a math hunt throughout the school,” one student explained, when encountered looking particularly harried in the sixth-floor hallway. She was scavenging the school building for answers to long-division questions, certainly one way of bringing math to life.

Another was erecting a fake mall in a fourth-grade classroom. During the “shopping” segment of Minds On, students could spend an allotment of hypothetical Benjamins on electronics or clothing, all while working on their percentage-calculating skills. Sales tax is one of those things that applies even when the school day is over, so it behooves students to master its math lest they find themselves short on cash.

The girls also completed tasks about measuring volume and calculating the speed and distance traveled by a car. And because nothing puts students to work like competition, the girls raced to see how many correct mathematical statements they could make from an assortment of numbers and operation signs, printed out on index cards.

Even though only one group came in first, each girl learned that math needn’t be the last thing on her mind as she goes about her life.

Photo Gallery: Minds On math