Making Fractions Fun, SMALLab Style

Finally coming up for air and getting a little time to blog about some interesting stuff I've been a part of. Just to get started, I wanted to show off a video my colleague Claudio Midolo shot of our fraction game in SMALLab, which we've provisionally dubbed "FracAttack".

The game is a cooperative between the two sides of the mat. Each side is trying to get their fraction converted in a way that allows them to add it with the other side. They are changing the common denominator to one they agree on, then moving the controller to the center of the space, then passing to the next person in line.

It worked really nicely in the two days we played it. It kept the roughly 10 or so kids we had in the space involved and generated a lot of yelling and cheering and other good play behavior. Plus, a number of kids were heard telling their friends how much they liked math now. Nice!

(P.S. You can just barely see my shaggy head pop up behind the computers in the background.)

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