During spring quarter at UCSD, ISEE education collaborated with Linda Vista elementary school to offer an after-school program "Math Expressions" once a week. Although the program required more weeks than were left of school we "piloted" it anyway. We had many insights from our observations and interactions, and even deeper ones from our students.
A quick summary - all of which could use more detail:
- Address level of student's knowledge first (Ok this one is a no-brainer but without time to do so for the pilot program we got first hand experience on why its so important)
- Students themselves may not recognize that games and activities that use math ARE math. (e.g. multiplication tic-tac-toe which requires knowledge of multiplication to play is not understood as practicing math
- An hour a week is too short
