South Side Upper Elementary students solve the answer to learning math at Family Math Night

Published 7:00 am Saturday, March 11, 2017

South Side Upper Elementary held its inaugural Family Math Night Thursday evening to encourage family involvement and promote math in a fun and pleasant way.
“Math tends to make many people cringe, but it is a beautiful and fun area of exploration,” Erin Clement, the school’s 6th grade math teacher, said.
Family Math Night was created after seeing the success of a similar event at the school called Family Science Night, South Side Upper Elementary Principal Debbie Smith said.
Thursday’s event was organized by the four math teachers at the school and hosted approximately 300 participants consisting of students, their families and friends.
Since June, the teachers have been participating in intensive math training, learning a variety of teaching techniques that came to life during Family Math Night.
“You can just tell that all the kids are having a blast showing their families around and playing fun games with them,” Smith said. “The best part is that they are learning something through all of this, which is the goal of the event, along with having a great time.”
As students and their families walked the halls of the school, they bounced between 13 classrooms, each with a different engaging activity to advance their math skills. The activities ranged from disco math, pizza chef, escape the classroom, fraction golf and more.
Yelps and screams of celebration could be heard down nearly every hall of South Side Upper Elementary as students won prizes after successfully completing the room’s mathematic objectives, leaving nothing but a smile on everyone’s face as they moved from room to room, Smith said.

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