Math camp is that magical time of year when, out of school, you go with all your friends for a week of fun and games and bonding and more mathematical formulae than you can shake a stick at. It is as much as an essential part of growing up as losing your baby teeth or taking family road trips.
What? You never went to math camp growing up? That's OK, neither did I. But our kids here have. Let me tell you about Math Camp '11.
Several months back during their school break I did math camp with the kids. It was primarily out of a desire to create a positive incentive for the kids to do something academic. The idea wasn't even to do a full-fledged summer-camp math oriented program. I wasn't going to whip out math skits or math games or math movie nights or math-themed food or anything. The weeks revolved around one very simple, simple prop. A chart.
The idea for the camp, the only idea for it, was to get the kids to memorize their multiplication tables. It was so simple a goal and had such valiant motives. The reason for getting kids to memorize multiplication tables was that, as I help kids with school, a whopping portion of the time is spent them counting on their fingers or drawing marks on paper until they reach the wrong answer (because they're never right). This includes the two 12th graders we have.
If you ask a kid to multiply 6 with 7 they will make 6 groups of seven marks on their paper and then go back and count the total number of marks. Even at that they are guaranteed to skip a number counting and get the wrong answer. If you take away their pencil they'll hold out 6 fingers and attempt to count through them 7 times. This method always results in them forgetting how many time's they've counted and arriving at the wrong answers. (More often they just forget to stop counting and when they hit 100 decide to go give up and ask somebody else to do it. I'd say 80% of the time spent helping a kid on math homework is waiting for them to count or multiply. Its a waste of my time and of the other kids that need help with things other than math. And if the problem has division, forget about it.
Christina lent a hand and made a great looking chart we hung in the dining hall to keep track of all the kid's progress. The chart soon became more of talked about fixture than leg/lamp from “A Christmas Story”.
What is it? What is it? Well it's an award, you know...like a statue.
Don't touch it, Ralphie.
It had each of their names down the side and across the top the numbers 1-12. To get a star under the ones they had to recite 1x1=1, 1x2=2 until 1x12=12. The same thing for twos all the way to twelves. If they couldn't remember the numbers they'd already done they wouldn't get a star next to their name on the chart. For example, it Manuel is reciting his sevens, after I may ask him 3x4, 5x8, and 6x12 to make sure he didn't forget his threes, fives, or sixes.
On the first Saturday of their school break I gave them the instructions and put up the chart in the dining hall and explained that whoever memorized their multiplication tables up through the twelves would get to go with me for the prize. I didn't tell them what the prize was because, really, it depended on how many people earned it. I decided to put up $100 towards the prize. If all the kids did it, it meant they were each probably gonna get a coke and a new pair of sandals. If only one kid did it, it meant we were gonna partay*. I left myself a little wiggle room and really got them excited with the ambiguity of a prize that was so awesome I couldn't tell them for fear of spoiling the surprise.
*Hi Grandma, how you doing. Its me, TJ. I just wanted to fill you in on some of the hip, new lingo the kids are using these days. The word “party”, when spelled with an additional “a” as printed above, is meant to reflect not a normal party, but a top-rung, barnstorming good time.
I quickly learned after the first weekend who was going to have no problem with this. By the time dinner rolled around on Sunday there had been two kids that finished the whole table, up to 12x12. They were both older and had already memorized their multiplication tables just by having been in school as long as they had and actually trying this whole time.
The thing is they were the only two kids that aced the table right away, so the next three or so weeks was packed full of kids coming to me at all times of the day trying to recite their table and getting frustrated when they would forget or I'd catch them counting on their fingers or their friends giving them the answers. For many of them it was actually great seeing them remark, “My homework is becoming so much easier, why didn't we do this program sooner.”
After three weeks and seeing kids struggle and fight and, dare I say, have fun memorizing their multiplication table, we made it to the last day the contest. It was an afternoon of action and nervous anticipation and there were three kids still fighting to finish their table. The only thing more nerve racking than going down to the wire to win an “awesome prize” is having to do it as fifteen spectators silently watch to see if you remember that 12x9=108 and so forth. All three got it before the deadline of dinner and got the chart marked off and a star added to their name and put on the list of grand prize winners. This brought the total number of kids that memorized their times tables to eight!
Eight kids? Only eight kids memorized their times tables?
Next time, find out why.
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