Baseball is Fun, So is Math! GO Phillies!!

This week some of our fourth graders have had a particularly fun homework assignment.  Follow the Phillies!  The students in T. Patti’s class are playing fantasy baseball during the post-season to learn statistics, decimals and long division.   If you have not heard it from your student yet, math is fun!  This is an important step in helping students not fall into a struggle with math anxiety.

Connecting mathematics to real-world experiences promotes learning and retention of new concepts.  Middle School parents also got a chance to hear about this from Teacher Joseph at Back to School night last week.  Brain research has revealed that students learn better when their lessons address four things:  Why, What, How, and What-if?  In math, “Why” is the connection of a concept to a student’s past experience, such as mixing concentrated fruit juice, which involves fractions.  “What” is the nuts and bolts of how do to the problem.  “How” is the practice and experience of working the problem and “What-if” is directly applying new learning to something concrete in the “real world.”

When most of us were growing up we learned the “What” and “How” of mathematics.   Many of us did not benefit from learning as much about the “Why” and “What-if.”  Statistics, fractions and long division are essential elements to master baseball statistics, and statistics are a useful way to determine how a player may perform.  This connection adds the why and what-if.  Besides, it’s fun, and bringing students back to math class year after year is the foundation of advanced learning.

So, GO PHILLIES! And GO STUDENTS!