East Somerville Community School's Math Night

On March 26th, I had the pleasure of attending this year's East Somerville Community School Math event. While teacher and organizer, Linda Wiegenfeld, was teaching the parents and answering their questions, their children were playing mathematical games led by other teacher volunteers.

The parents were interested in learning other ways to approach topics such as division and in having their questions answered about math topics they never learned while in school, such as "outliers." It was interesting to see parents who had grown-up in other countries approached division with different algorithms than those of us who grew up in the US schools. Meanwhile, Linda Wiegenfeld was teaching yet another way to approach division, one that was more intuitive and representative of what is actually happening when you divide.

After joining the parents group for a while, I also visited the rooms where the students were playing mathematical games and enjoyed a game of Mancala with a couple of girls after watching students energetically playing a game of "baseball" using dice.

The event ended with everyone eating pizza, generously donated by the Bickoff family. Linda Wiegenfeld was a Somerville Mathematics Fund teacher grant winner who used her grant money to support this event and to buy the games that she also uses in her classroom at ESCS.

Be sure to read Delia Marshall's article on this event in the Somerville Journal.