Making Math Entertaining

Just how does one make learning fractions fun?

Should the teacher talk in a funny voice while teaching the lesson? Are neon coloured numbers enough to add in excitement?

While these examples are hyperbolic, they do represent teachers who try, but ultimately fail, to make math interesting. The problem with this type of teaching is the teachers try to add something "fun" on top of their lessons to make them engaging, but the lessons themselves remain the same. In order to make teaching truly engaging, teachers need to dig down deeper beneath the surface level of their lessons, and change the lessons themselves.

This past week, I had fun while doing math, which was an interesting experience for me. Our teacher gave us a tarsia puzzle to solve during class, and I felt disappointed that class was over before we finished the puzzle.

Our tarsia puzzle in progress

The tarsia puzzle reminded me of playing dominoes. Each participant is given a set of triangles, and they must work with their teammates to match up each of the triangles with its correct partner. Unlike dominoes, where there are multiple ways to build the pattern, with a tarsia puzzle, there is only one correct pattern. The real challenge of the puzzle is finding not just a pairing, but the particular pairing that works to make the entire final shape work. My classmates and I had put together quite a few pairings before we realized that they weren't creating the correct shape, and so we had to rethink the entire puzzle.

A finished tarsia puzzle - colleenyoung.wordpress.com

What I really enjoyed about the tarsia puzzle was that it took my focus away from the math that I was learning, and gave me a goal that I actually enjoyed working towards. One of the problems that I personally have with math class is the fact that it's so boring and seemingly pointless. I generally find it extremely difficult to sit and practice creating a list of equivalent fractions, yet, while I was working on the tarsia puzzle, I was doing exactly just that with ease.

Another method of teaching fractions in an actually interesting manner is to make them meaningful in a practical setting, for example making smoothies. This site teaches students about fractions while teaching them how to make smoothies. The thing that I like about this site is the same thing that I liked about the tarsia puzzle - how they both shift the focus of the activity away from the math in the activity, and onto something else. By making math not the end goal in and of itself, but rather a means to a goal, makes it feel a lot less tedious.