From: Pat Ballew 
To: Teacher2Teacher Public Discussion
Date: 2000062215:07:11
Subject: Re: Math activities or clubs

If you can't find a formal program, try doing it on your own and let
the interests of the students drive the creation..  Here are some
ideas to use at first :
Go to the math forum and look at some of the elementary POW from
previous weeks.  If any of them look at or just above the grade level
(stretch them but not too much at first) then let the kids try to
solve them.  At first I would let them work individually or in groups
as they wish.. they may float back and forth as the problems change...

http://mathforum.com/pow/

  Get some of the manipulative based programs (box it bag it ..
whatever, I don't know the names at this level) for a couple of grades
up and let them work on them... try some that are geometric and some
about combinations and probability.... different kids will be
attracted to different ones..

  Look for projects that they can do with real data in your
community... traffic studies on the street outside school, how many
siblings do the kids in different grade levels have (do fifth graders
have more siblings than 2nd graders on average?), who is absent from
school more, boys or girls... be alert because the best questions to
study come right out of the children's mouths.

You can download some arcade games from Rick Paris, you can find a
link at my web page at http://www.geocities.com/poetsoutback/  Look
for something about middle school games and the link will download
right to your computer with a self extracting zip file... lots of nice
math/games on this..

Hope some of this helps..
good luck

-Pat Ballew, for the Teacher2Teacher service

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