faculty voices

make it a game: math at friends

Lower School Head—and former Middle School math teacher—

Amabelle Sze encourages us to let go of our own math anxiety as we teach our kids to embrace how fun math can truly be.

This winter, we welcomed our Lower School parents back into classrooms for our annual Math Mornings. During these resurrected in-person gatherings, families heard from Lower School Head Amabelle Sze about the ways we teach math in the Lower School— and the innumerable ways math proves itself essential in our everyday lives, before going to join their students in their classrooms and throughout the hallways for engaging math games and activities.

At Friends, an essential part of our program is embracing the idea that we can use different methods to get to the same answer, and thinking of different strategies is, in fact, encouraged. “... That’s a perfect example of how we do math at Friends,” Amabelle emphasized during her remarks. “The kids are not stuck in one mode. They have lots of different strategies, depending on the information.” This is very different from the traditional approach to teaching math, in which students are encouraged to get to the correct answer as quickly as possible. However, as Amabelle points out, kids don’t get to a deep understanding of concepts through this kind of race to the finish, and it often leaves them unsure when they encounter a similar problem next time. “We want to help cultivate powerful, innovative, curious problem-solvers versus someone who can just get to the right answer quickly,” Amabelle emphasized.

At Friends, we also encourage group problem-solving, with students coming together with their peers ro exchange ideas and grapple with a problem that, Amabelle pointed out, “often has multiple points of entry and a high ceiling—so they can really go far with it.” When students work with classmates who may approach a problem in a different way than they initially would, different pathways in the brain are engaged and this helps students to create deeper, more productive connections across different regions of the brain.

Explaining a recent math lesson in 2nd Grade, Amabelle pointed out: “At first students are just playing with numbers and exploring, then they begin to look for patterns, and ultimately, they’re trying to form rules. They can use these rules as conjectures to generalize their math learnings. And sometimes they even disprove their own among friends: winter 2023 conjectures. From there, students think about their conjectures and present to the class and participate in what’s called a math congress. These are carefully curated shares to move the understanding of the group forward.”

In addition to tackling math as part of a group of curious problem-solvers, SFFS Lower-Schoolers also approach math in the form of games, which helps to encourage a love of the subject and the idea that math is actually fun. Unfortunately, many students report math anxiety in school, which can negatively impact students’ working memory, becoming a vicious cycle when approaching math. Stu- dents often report early negative experiences with math, like timed tests, which can have a long-lasting impact.

Amabelle shares, “We play a lot of math games. Kids are not stressed out when they’re playing math games—they’re having a good time, practicing skills over and over again, they’re thinking strategically, they’re checking each other’s work, and it makes math a social activity, helping students see themselves as mathematicians. And this is how they develop number sense and fluency.

We have so many conversations with our kids about their social-emotional well-being. And we read to our kids every single night. But most of us don’t really engage in math conversations with our kids—remember to enjoy math with your child!” •

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Thank you!