Eddie's Math Teaching Blog

My math education class visited Peach Plains Elementary one more time before the semester ended to work with the kids in design thinking. We arrived at around 2:00 at the elementary school and broke the class into our two groups from before, with half of the GVSU students working with first graders and the other half, including myself, working with the fourth graders from our previous visit. Upon entering the room from before, the kids we had worked with seemed excited with the prospect of working with us again. In order to make sure that we got to work more quickly, we sent the prospective teachers to work with the same group as last time. In hindsight, I can't really tell if that was the best decision, as some groups reported less focus on the activity. In our group, the kids were laser-focused on uncovering my partner's age (which was not the purpose of the activity). Anyways, after reuniting with our kids from last time, we began with a short activity that would get

During the semester, my class signed up for a few Family Math Nights where we, the students, taught the kids at the event how to play a math based game. While some might have a little bit of work that they would need to do to come up with a math game, but I have been sitting on something for the entire semester and before. You see, one of my favorite hobbies is a little game by the name of Dungeons and Dragons, a very popular role-playing game. Now one might ask, "Dungeons and Dragons? What makes that a good math game?" It's a good question, but it all is based on the method that the game is carried out. Most everything substantial is run through die rolls which dictates whether the action of the character is successful. Ultimately, D&D is just a probability-based game with fantasy flavor, and my partner and I leaned into that. Naturally, some other questions might be "Doesn't that game take forever?" or "Isn't that game a bit too complicate