Our final fraction club at Eastwood was a huge success, though it could have been better. http://www.duboisproject.com/fraction-club-as-recess-activity/

I am the author, choreographer, producer, director, technical director and one of the main actors.  I give myself an A in my role as an author and choreographer.  The concepts and sequencing worked.  Likewise, I feel that I did well as the producer.  The right people were there.  The mathletes were on time because I had arranged for a bus to bring them back from Prospect (a curve ball thrown at me less than 48 hours before the show).  My assistant coaches, the Langston students, were there because I had recruited them  both directly and through their guardians.  And I had arranged someone to help me drive them from Langston to Eastwood and given us a fifteen minute buffer.  It took 20 minutes to collect them from Langston, exceeding my buffer by five minutes.  The coaches, one HS student, one volunteer parent and three college students, were there because they generously volunteered their time.

I give myself a B as director.  I did not do a particularly good job of training the assistant coaches.  I did not explain that stripes were negative numbers.  I barely mentioned the Du Bois Principles.  We did a short dry run of both activities.  I did not fully train the assistant coaches about the FCC levels.  Two assistant coaches were promoting mathletes up one letter at a time (i.e. from 1C to 1D and 2A to 2B) instead of from one level to the next.  I could have noticed this and promoted these mathletes myself, but I failed to do so.  I did notice that a suspicious pattern, but I did not put it together.

I give myself a B as the technical director as well.  Our coaches did a terrific job setting everything up.  We had enough materials (in part because of some last minute work which I started and the coaches completed),  The canopy was important.  71F and sunny is hot, so the shade was useful.  However, I cut it too close, so I had to interrupt coaches from what they were doing to join in the training.  We could have used more table cloths and more fraction pieces.

I give myself a C+ in my acting role.  I did not explain Fractions on the Run well.  I did not show the mathletes what an empty circle was.  I did not have the right props to show them.  I did not explain that stripes were negative.  Nor did I explain where negative numbers were on the number line.  And, as i mentioned earlier, I did not notice that two assistant coaches were promoting mathletes up just one letter at a time instead of a full number at a time.




I should have brought more table cloths.  Some mathletes and coaches might have chosen to be in the sun.  I may also need more fraction circle pieces.  It would have been nice to have water there, although none of the mathletes asked for water.  A picture or two would have been nice.


The big TODO:

• Create a kit for teaching Fractions on the Run to new mathletes.  This kit should include:
• Cards with a filled in circle, an empty circle and a striped circle
• A super short number line complete with a few envelopes

This "lesson" should not last more than 150 seconds.  But it would help mathletes get off onto the right track.

And the big lesson for me is that I need to delegate more.  Being in charge of too many things leaves me flustered and unable to focus on the most important things.  

Handling the weather

We host Fraction Club outside as much as possible.  This means working in an uncontrolled environment.

When the weather is hot, we use look for shade, or create shade by putting up a canopy and limit the running.  We move the challenge card panels, sorting line and success boards a bit closer to the number line to reduce running in Fractions on the Run.  We encourage mathletes to enjoy Fraction Decoder Challenges, which require less running than FotR.  If we use the relay race concept, we keep the distance shorter, say 25 to 35 feet, to reduce the amount of running.  Or, we may skip that entirely in favor of more sedentary activities.  Hot is relative.  The first spring day that is 72F and sunny feels hot to some children.  By the middle of the summer, many children do fine at 80F.

When the weather is cold, we protect the mathletes from the wind and we increase the running.  We stick to Fractions on the Run (instead of switching them to Fraction Decoder Challenges which involve less running).  We emphasize Klondike Quest, we requires the most running.  We keep the distance involved in the mock relay race fairly large, say 50 to 60 feet.  We put up the canopy and at least two sides to protect them from the wind.  If possible, we put a picnic table under the canopy so that they don't have to sit on the cold (and often damp) ground.

When rain threatens, we avoid activities that could be destroyed by a bit of rain, especially Fractions on the Run, and make sure that we can get the children and the equipment under cover quickly.  Significant rain or a thunderstorm shuts us down, but neither spotty drizzle nor the mere threat of rain needs to.

Using these techniques, we have been able to offer Fraction Club outside 80% of the days after spring break in the spring and before fall break in the fall.  We can operate successfully in temperatures ranging from 50F to 80F.  Even 45F can be fine on a calm, sunny day in the spring.  Our materials have been proven to hold up to 30 MPH winds.

Being outside has multiple advantages.  Most children like to be outside. They can use outdoor voices without being scolded or making life unbearable for the coaches.  And, fundamentally when the weather is nice, I believe that children should spend as much time outside as possible.

I know he likes it

Sabron's father told me today:  "I know he likes it.  Because that is all that he was talking about last week."

First Langston Girls Math Club

I am pleased that the Du Bois Project's first Langston Girls Math Club was a success.  Four girls attended, three African American girls and an asian girl.  It was led by a high school senior who has been helping he Du Bois Project as a coach for over a year.

Because it is a fifteen minute walk from the high school to the middle school and the high school gets out slightly later than the middle school, I had club's attention for fifteen minutes.  One of the two sixth grade African-American girls asked if they could do KenKens.  And, yes, I am the one who introduced her to KenKens in an earlier Du Bois Math Club.  Soon all four of them were zipping through KenKens as quickly as I could pass them out to them.  I made them work their way up from the easiest KenKens.  But nonetheless, there made nice progress.

I am thinking of using this fifteen minute window next week to give these girls a chance to work on larger, harder KenKens together.  I will tell them that they are only allowed to place a number in a square if they can convince the other girls that that number is the only one that can go there.  I don't know if this will work, but I am excited to give it a try.

Du Bois Project Week ending April 7th

Fraction Club at Eastwood was terrific, though I wish more Du Bois Priority children had participated.  My coaches were fully trained and did pretty much everything as I had hoped.  And the result was an amazingly smooth operation, the mathletes were engaged start to finish.  

One innovation that we started this week was having the mathletes come to me, ideally running, to get their challenges.  We had been doing this with Fraction Circle Challenges, but now we extended this to include Fraction Pie Puzzles and Chocolate Fix.  This allowed me to control which mathletes got to do the popular Fraction Pie Puzzles.  Few college students have the ability to say "No" to a child.  Hence asking them to limit a mathletes time on Fraction Pie Puzzles so that others can participate did not work.  By taking charge of the challenge cards, I was able to make sure that all mathletes got a chance to enjoy a Fraction Pie Puzzle.

An earlier innovation had a wonderful side effect that I was not entirely anticipating.  A month or so ago I instituted a policy that mathletes had to complete their Fraction Circle Challenges entirely independently in order to earn the right to move up a level.  My main motivation for this was to make sure that mathletes were not getting ahead of themselves.  But, it has had two wonderful side effects.  It allows a single coach to help more mathletes.  And, it makes leveling up more of a prize and hence increases interest.  

Fraction Circle Challenges is something that I have been tweaking for over a year now.  And it is now working better than it is ever has before.  

No doubt part of what made Fraction Club at Eastwood go so well is that we had several non-priority (i.e. progeny of white/asian middle class intact families) mathletes and relatively few Du Bois Priority families.  

Hence one of my goals for this week is to increase the number of Du Bois Priority children attending.  The mom of one young AA mathlete does not answer her cell phone.  Leaving a message on a cold call has never worked so I was stymied.  Then I thought to ask my friend, a retired AA teacher, Mrs. Grant,  if she knew the mom.  I then asked Mrs. Grant to help me reach the mom to enroll her son.  She said that the mom did not go to the same church that she did, but she knew which church she attended and that she would go over and talk to her.  If this connection happens and I still don't get her son to attend, nothing would have.  

Fraction Club at Prospect had the right mathletes, almost all of whom were Du Bois Priority   But it did not go as smoothly.  We set up outdoors for the first time this spring.  Wednesday it was only 40° F, so we went inside quickly.  Thursday it was gorgeous, but one of my special projects, an AA boy, Jonyl, who usually loves Fractions on the Run, simply wasn't into it today.  Unfortunately, his lack of enthusiasm rubbed off on his friend, another AA boy who who had been begging to attend Fraction Club for weeks, to some extent.   I told them that they did not have to participate, but my frustration with their decision to sit out was pretty obvious.  Matt, another AA boy, stretched his snack out and never came back after snack.  He pushed the limits on snack repeatedly.  Taking his snack with him away from the table on several occasions.  This reminds me of the need to state the rules clearly at the beginning.  They don't listen to the rules.  But, if you state them you can refer back to them with some authority.

My big thrill this week was learning that my 7th grade protégé, an AA boy, MJ, earned the second highest score in our school and tenth in the region in the regional Math Counts competition.  Several participants at the workshop on "How to Run a Math Camp" talked about the need for an existence proof - i.e. an under represented minority who excels at math.  It annoyed me slightly that they did not consider theDu Bois Project as a candidate for producing this existence proof.  But, even then I was thinking that MJ might be just that.

I am quite proud of the racial diversity in our Math Counts team.  Several times last year, I offered to create a math club centered around MJ.  This year we made it happen.  The first ten weeks of the math club, I did not show them anything that looked like a math problem.  Focusing instead on logic puzzles and spirograph.  The first time I offered them a math challenge, I gave them just one, and it was as a prize for completing a logic puzzle.  Another day I had them run to get math challenges.  And, of course, I recruited Du Bois Priority students.  The math teacher was initially baffled, but he understood and accepted what I was trying to do.  MJ did OK on the AMC 8 contest, but nothing special.  But, he continued to attend math club more regularly than anyone else - in part because I always made sure that the meeting time worked for him.  His interest in attacking math challenges grew and well, he rather aced the Math Counts competition.  Now we have an entire year to get him ready to lead next year's Math Counts team.  I have arranged to meet with MJ's dad this week to talk about where we go from here.  

One last random note:  I am proud of the amount of time I put into innovations that I end up throwing away.  OK, so it would be better if I could figure out which innovations are going to work and which ones won't.  For every innovation that we keep, I probably try two or three that don't stick.  Sometimes you have to get those out of the way to make way for new innovations that work.

  Some of the failed innovations seem so good on the surface.  Particularly my use of red reveal for secret Fractions on the Run challenges.  I had high hopes for that one.  The problem was that we were never able to make the underlying mechanism, having mathletes be inspectors work.  Perhaps I could have figured out that having mathletes as inspectors didn't work before going to all of the trouble to create red reveal confirmation panels.  But, part of the thrill of being an inspector was the red reveal "secret decoder card".  I still hope to find a way to make the red reveal work.  But, for now that is back to the back burner.

Note:  Names have been changed.  Anyone who knows these individuals will be able to decipher the names.  But, at least they won't show up in a google search.