{"id":83409,"date":"2019-04-12T18:12:33","date_gmt":"2019-04-12T23:12:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/news-and-events\/?p=83409"},"modified":"2019-04-12T18:12:33","modified_gmt":"2019-04-12T23:12:33","slug":"it-adds-up-delta-state-math-professors-lead-afterschool-math-club-at-presbyterian-day-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/news-and-events\/2019\/04\/it-adds-up-delta-state-math-professors-lead-afterschool-math-club-at-presbyterian-day-school\/","title":{"rendered":"It Adds Up: Delta State Math Professors Lead Afterschool Math Club at Presbyterian Day School"},"content":{"rendered":"

Delta State University and the Presbyterian Day School (PDS) in Cleveland motivate elementary schoolchildren to learn about math through fun activities and games.<\/p>\n

Dr. Liza Bondurant, an assistant professor of math at Delta State, and her colleague, Dr. Lee Virden, an associate professor of math, lead the Crazy 8s, a recreational afterschool math club, which seeks to increase student math achievement as well as recruit and train future STEM and education majors.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see this as an opportunity to build a community partnership with PDS, help PDS students enjoy and excel in math, and encourage PDS students to think about studying math at DSU someday,\u201d Bondurant said.<\/p>\n

The club, which meets one hour a day for eight weeks at the primary school, began last fall and concluded its second eight-week session on April 3. Each session, called a season, focuses on a variety of math topics and new activities disguised as learning, Bondurant explained.<\/p>\n

Bedtime Math, a nonprofit organization that seeks to make learning math fun, provides a free kit for the hands-on activities and games that use manipulatives like glow sticks, bouncy dice, and toilet paper.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Dr. Liza Bondurant helps students make a tessellation out of glow sticks.<\/p><\/div>\n

The first activity each season involves constructing shapes with glow sticks and Styrofoam balls.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s teaching them about geometry, their creations glow in the dark, and they are constructing them with their hands,\u201d Bondurant said. \u201cThey really enjoy those kinds of activities.\u201d<\/p>\n

The club\u2019s name, Crazy 8s, is the same as a card game that involves matching numbers and suits. There are also a lot of eights involved in the activities (i.e.: a Crazy 8s board game).<\/p>\n

Presbyterian Day School\u2019s Principal Diane Burd said more than two dozen elementary students now view math more worthwhile and have stronger math abilities by participating in the club.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ones that had a little fear of math or a little resistance to math, I think they feel more comfortable about working with math,\u201d Burd said. \u201cI think it\u2019s given them a lot of confidence.\u201d Through the creative, participatory activities, the children \u201csee that math can be fun and that it\u2019s not something you need to dread.\u201d<\/p>\n

The club also gives volunteers like Laura Gaskin, a junior majoring in elementary education at Delta State, skills she can take with her into the classroom once she graduates.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt gives me excellent experience working with kids,\u201d Gaskin said. \u201cI also get to observe other teaching styles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bondurant said she hopes to keep the program going and get even more students involved. \u201cWe\u2019ve enjoyed it. It\u2019s a lot of fun, and the kids are liking it. It\u2019s a win-win definitely.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

Virden helps a student measure how far a marshmallow flew from the catapult that the student made.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Delta State University and the Presbyterian Day School (PDS) in Cleveland motivate elementary schoolchildren to learn about math through fun activities and games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":577,"featured_media":83404,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-college-of-arts-and-sciences","category-college-of-education-and-human-sciences"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/news-and-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/news-and-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/news-and-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/news-and-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/577"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/news-and-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83409"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/news-and-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83412,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/news-and-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83409\/revisions\/83412"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/news-and-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/news-and-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/news-and-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/news-and-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}