Meet the Challenge to Involve More Families: Family Math Night with Higher-Level-Thinking Board Games
Highlands Elementary School is a nine-time NNPS Partnership Schools Award winner. Always improving, the school’s full and active School, Family, and Community Partnership (SFCP) team continued to conduct a comprehensive program of family and community involvement in 2009. One activity aimed to improve the Family Math Night with a variety of board games and other activities that encouraged higher-level thinking skills in math. This activity, for 80 first and second graders and 90 family members, identified math games that could be played at a number of strategic levels to activate students’ abilities to think flexibly, try multiple solutions, and work creatively in math. The evening’s game “openers,” played in the cafeteria, included Logic Links, Addition Adventures, and Planet Puzzler. Then, students and families were divided into groups and competed on games such as Blokus, Qwirkle, and Dino Math in two 20-minute sessions. Finally, attendees played a round of “conceptual bingo,” in which parents helped students solve challenging math problems to place markers on their bingo cards.
Eight of the school’s 4th and 5th graders, who were familiar with the games, volunteered to guide the other students as they played and one teacher on the action team served as emcee. The Math Night also gave parents a chance to interact informally with teachers and with the principal, who played some of the games and took photographs at the event.
Reach Results for Student Success in School: Improve Health and Wellness
The Healthy Balance Fair aimed to help families and students, K-5, consider their nutritional, physical, and socio-emotional health. The evening was planned in collaboration with the school’s social worker, teachers, parent volunteers, a nutritionist from a local hospital, a community yoga instructor, and others. Families rotated through three sessions. One focused on food and nutrition with attention to the food pyramid, food choices, and healthy snacks. Samples were provided. Another session featured discussions on how to reduce stress, solve problems, and clarify issues, with the use of journaling explained as a strategy to reduce tension. A third session featured light exercise and yoga instruction on movements and posture to relieve stress. The three themes gave balance to the evening.
Families took home information and reminders (e.g., recipes for healthy eating and a magnet of the food pyramid). The school, family, and community action team also prepared a list of books related to the three topics that were available for purchase. The evening helped students and families think together about health and wellness. All of the information aimed to help families and students better balance their own physical and mental health.
See Highlands Elementary School’s history of Partnership School Awards from 2001 to 2008 and examples of activities in Promising Partnership Practices on the website at www.partnershipschools.org in the section Success Stories. Visit the school at http://www.ncusd203.org/highlands/