An educator asked recently: "I need help with my math intervention time. What can I be doing during this time? What does it look like for me and what does it look like for my students?" Excellent question! Here are 5 awesome activities to boost numeracy, pattern recognition, probability, and problem solving skills.
Play games. Go Fish, Blackjack, and other card and dice games are perfect intervention activities for struggling students! The more you play these games, the stronger number sense and pattern recognition become. Soon, your students will be predicting, which is a sign of ultimate engagement.
Make math-based art projects. For example, if you have access to yarn, glue, and poster board, work with the kids to make a poster of fractions by cutting the yarn into equal lengths and then cutting one piece into halves, one into fourths, etc., and gluing all of the pieces onto the board.
Have them work together. Board games like Yahtzee, Othello, Sorry, or backgammon should be regular features of your intervention class time. Hit up garage sales and Goodwill stores to find these games at bargain prices!
Let them work alone. Teach the kids solitaire (with an actual deck of cards in their hands), have lots of puzzles on hand, and let them color mandalas. Garage sales and Goodwill are excellent sources of these, and the prices fit a teacher's budget.
Get outside your curriculum! Explore math in art, music, and history. Share the works of Piet Mondrian and M.C. Escher. Listen to music with varying tempos. Research the role of lines and shapes in architecture. Discuss the lives of mathematicians throughout history, including the untimely death of Hypatia and the math-based cult of Pythagoras.
Bonus tip: The most important strategy is to create a space where kids can have fun and enjoy their time with you!
Find more creative ideas in our book, Ah-Ha! Games for the Brain, available through Amazon, your local bookstore, or this website.