Monster Math Night Review

Monster Math Numeracy Night

In reflecting back upon OMSK’s Monster Math Numeracy Night, I’d have to say it was the best one we’ve hosted so far. This was our fourth year hosting this event and each year it gets bigger and better I believe. 

The event ran from 5-7pm on Thursday, October 30th. A spooky menu was available for purchase from our Home & School Committee, which encouraged more teachers to stay and have dinner at school and then host a math centre. 

We requested $300 from our Home & School in the past years and did so again this year. Our Home & School president, Lana Martin, gladly sponsors the event because she makes that amount of money back and more from the sales of her dinner. The money we borrow is used to purchase all of the small prizes that the students can purchase with their “monster money.” Prices ranged from $0.25 to a couple dollars for items. Students had to do additional math to count out the correct money amounts to “purchase” their prizes. It was also used to purchase larger prizes for the family door prize (Cineplex gift certificates, popcorn, and a movie basket).

At last year’s event, we hosted over 300 people (families, students, and guests) throughout Numeracy Night and this year was about the same. Last year we only had 5 tables set up with teachers who participated in the event because most of the teacher doubled up and ran one table together, which took away from the number of games available to play. This was a concern because students’ feedback was that the event was fun but they wished there was more games to go to. We wanted to improve upon this for this year and were able to by having double the math stations for students to play. 

New this year was the addition of a haunted stage, which was the hard work of Mrs.Deb Martin-Able’s math resource students. They spent the week leading up to Numeracy Night brainstorming ideas for the layout, making the props, and decorating the stage. While I wasn’t able to go through the maze on Numeracy Night since I was so busy running my own thing, the screams of terror from the kids echoing down the hall leads me to believe that it was a success. :) Each math student wore a scary costume and was hidden throughout the maze and would jump out to scare the students going through the maze. In order to pass, the student had to answer a math question generated by the math student and they were allowed to continue to the next monster and math question. It cost $5.00 to enter the monster math and the students enjoyed playing more math games in order to raise enough monster money do go through the maze numerous times.

The pride of the math resource students was evident while they were busy setting up their stage. Afterwards they received lots of compliments from their peers and teachers on what a great job they did. This was extremely beneficial to their self-esteem especially since these are the students who are usually the ones who need help. Instead, it was their night to shine and they definitely did. 

Another new addition was the community raffle in order to raise money from OMSK to donate to Teiehkwa and her battle with cancer. Prizes were generously donated by OMSK staff. In total, we were able to give Teiehkwa and her family almost $400. 

The last new addition to Numeracy Night was having the Scholastic Book Fair overlap with math night. This was a amazing way to get students excited about both numeracy AND literacy. In that first day we had almost $2000 in sales, which was a great push to being able to add $2200 in books to our school classrooms and library. I was in charge of running the book fair so as students came in, I had them estimate how much their books would cost and then we’d total them up and see if they were close. We will be overlapping both events next year as well as a way to push literacy and numeracy and make them both fun. 

I was so busy with my own events that I wished I had more time to actually get into the math night and see it in action myself. I came in at the end when things were winding down and it looked like the students were having so much fun. 

I organized two math centres in the library that were mathematical skills but about literacy. I had 4 different stacks of b  ooks for the early primary, primary, junior, and intermediate. Each group had to estimate the number of pages in their age group’s stack of books and put their name on it and enter it into our draw. One student from each category who estimated the closest to correct number of pages each won $15 of free books. The second centre I did was a spinner which different book covers on it. It was based on probability. It had two different spinners (one for primary and one for junior/intermediate). Questions for example could be: 1) What’s the fraction of books that have yellow covers. 2) Write 2 different equivalent fractions that represent the number of books written by Robert Munsch. 

I was able to run my math centres for part of the night; however, I quickly became swamped in the Book Fair sales so my partner had to take over at helping run the 2 math centres. Next time, I will bring 2 volunteers to help me with the centres and the book fair as well. 

Overall, upon reflecting on this night, the only thing I can recommend it having more math centres. Although we did have double the centres from last year, this event is so big that even that was not enough. A suggestion could be to invite parents/guardians and the grade 7 & 8 students to create and run their own math centres to add to the night. I look forward to what we come up with for next year.