Numeracy Day – April 18th, 2023

The Plan

8:00am-9:00am

Set up stations and explain them to staff supporters. Assign staff supports to stations and give

them the corresponding answer keys. Photocopy sheets for 5-8 groups.

Station 1 – Catalog Calculator

Station 2 – Intricacies of Independence (chess board)

Station 3 – KenKen Kommunication

Station 4 – Roving Rivers (physical objects to represent animals)

Station 5 – Doubtful Deck (random cards sorted into sets of 52)

Station 6 – Crossmath Conundrum (coins)

Station 7 – Traveler’s Timetable

Station 8 – ShaShapespes

Station 9 – Twirling Toothpicks (toothpicks)

Station 10 – Futoshiki Foible

Station 11 – Scattered Symbol (cut up completed symbol, tape them up)

Station 12 – Busy Bees (yellow highlighters)

Finish – Pixel Art (graph paper, pencil crayons)

Set up chair arounds the tipi air (20-35 seats needed).

9:00am-9:15am

Students get breakfast from the cafeteria and meet in the Learning Commons, guide them to tipi

area as they come in. Have Amazing Race music, or equivalent, playing as they come in.
9:15am

Welcome students to Numeracy Day! Introduce myself to students, and point out staff

supporters. You were in here yesterday so you know the rules, but remember to treat this space

with respect and lets thank Mehnaz and her students for sharing their space with us so we can do

this. Go over Agenda for the day: A-Math-ing Race, Dance Challenge, Games.

9:25am-9:35am

Hand out matching shape puzzle pieces to students, once everyone has one, tell them to get into

groups according to their puzzles (3-4 per group), and choose a group name. Once they have

their group, send them to the area in front of screen.

Once at the screen, show them the trailer for Forrest Fenn’s Hidden Treasure. Explain how the A-

Math-ing Race is going to work. We have maps to the treasure, except oh no! it’s blank. Using

the stations around the learning commons, you will need to fill out your map. There are 12

stations, each with its own unique challenge. Upon completing a challenge, you will be given

coordinates for your map. Once you have all 12 coordinates, you will see the path you need to

take to find the hidden treasure. Hand out maps, calculators, and pencils.

9:35am-10:25am

Students work in their groups to solve the challenges. Staff supporters will be in charge of 4

stations each, answering questions that might come up. Once students finish at one station, they

can move on to another station, can’t ever have more than 2 groups at one station though.

Students have to stay with their group, they can’t split up.
10:25am-10:35am

Break

10:35am-11:25am

Students continue to work on challenges, staff supporters can rotate to different stations if they

would like, or stay at stations they are familiar with. Give final countdowns warnings at 11:00am

(1/4 of your time left), 11:15 (1/10 of your time left), and at 11:25 to finish the last piece they are

working on. If a group finishes and has their map checked by Matthew they win and find the

treasure! (Have musical/sound cue to announce a winner) Other groups continue to work,

striving for second, third and so forth place. Finished groups can do pixel art and/or colour by

numbers.

11:25am-11:45am

The A-Math-ing Race has concluded! Even if you didn’t finish the whole map, you did excellent

on the challenges. Give each student a prize, and then get them to help clean up the stations.

11:45am-12:00pm

All students can do pixel art and/or colour by numbers.

12:00pm-12:30pm

Lunch, clean-up remaining A-Math-ing Race materials.

12:35pm-1:00pm

Like I said at the start of the day, we are going to start this afternoon with some dance activities.

Now what does dancing have to do with Math?

-rhythm, patterns, shapes

Watch Math dance Youtube video (0:00:00-0:02:40)

That’s what we are going to be doing, your first step is to work together to come up with a series

of handshakes and put them together into a dance, like we just saw. I’m going to let you choose

your own groups, but if you aren’t working, we will need to separate you. You’ll have 15

minutes to do this. Teachers walk around and try to prompt students who are struggling, and

ensure they’re on task.

Does anyone want to come up and share their handshake?

1:00pm-1:20pm

Alright, next up we’re going to work with something called symmetry, who knows what

symmetry means? Symmetry is really important in dance, it’s how dancers move in sync, and a

lot of your handshakes probably had symmetry in them.

Play Simon Says to show symmetry. Students who were focused during handshake activity can

lead Simon Says. Play for roughly 15 minutes or until students lose interest.

Another way we can use symmetry in dancing is in following rhythm. Watch Math dance

Youtube video (0:07:13-0:09:38), will have to split group into halves, have one staff supporter

guiding each half and Matthew will alternate where needed. Thank you for participating, I’ll let

you have an extra short break before we do the next step, you can’t leave the learning commons,

but feel free to sit or chat for a moment. Break 1:20pm-1:30pm

1:30pm-2:00pm

We are going to put together all we’ve learned and do a full dance. We are going to do a dance in

the shape of a square. You’ll be in groups of 8, with 2 people on each side of the square. I’ll go

over some of the dance steps (with one staff supporter as partner) before we break into groups.

Allemande: turn to the corner of the square, lock forearms with your corner and spin around

twice.

Grand: take right hand of partner and move past each other, then left hand next, and so forth until

meet your partner again.

Spring: one partner goes into the middle to meet the others, and then back out, now the second

partner goes in and out.

Break students randomly into groups of 8, tell them to get into the square position. Once sorted,

start playing Can the Frog Tap Dance music. Start by counting out the beat so students can get a

feel, then start calling out steps. Go through the full song (roughly 5 minutes). Once done, get

students to come up with their own steps in the square dance formation. Give the rest of time

until break, roughly 15 minutes.

2:00pm-2:10pm

Break, set up math games during break.

2:10pm-3:20pm

To start, does anyone want to share their square dance?

Pull out math games and give short description of each one so students can know where they

want to go. Staff supporters will be in charge of covering a couple stations, will have printed

instructions but will likely need to go over the rules. Students can change games if they want, but

need to playing something for the whole time.

Dice games: Yahtzee (2-4), Double Dice Dilemma (2-4)

Card games: Golf (2-4), 31 (2-4)

Guessing games: Guess Who (2), Mastermind (2-3)

Bingo (2-4)

Chess (2)

3:20pm-3:30pm

Clean up before the bell.

3:30pm

Final bell.