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Mathology
Mathology is a “math playground” for students in grades 3.5 to 8 to explore math before or after school in community with other students, using the variety of math equipment that we have at Berkeley Rose. Its purpose is to radically deepen children’s relationship to mathematiccs. It is not tutoring; it is not to “help the needy students.”
It is math enrichment for all.
In Mathology, students work on a variety of problems.
Some examples:
A game of tic-tac-toe within tic-tac-toe: to make the big three in a row you have to capture the smaller threes in a row, but to do that, you need to know your times tables and factors. In the photo, two sixth graders had begged, “Could we PLEASE PLEASE have a few extra minutes to finish our game?” I benevolantly granted them five more minutes to practice multiplication tables.
This wooden logic puzzle has been a big draw. Students must place various logic gates in particular slots to make the marbles end up in the required positions.
Mathology’s morning scrum. This time slot happens to lean towards sixth grade; other slots are more mixed or lean towards third-fourth. The photo also includes an eighth grade assistant. Each Mathology has an assistant who helps me play math with the children. The middle of the photo shows a game of Pig, in which they have to understand probabilities. They didn’t, and at the end of the game, they each had terrible scores of zero. They will try again.