Our most recent Family Math Night event was done at an International Baccalaureate (IB) elementary school. The two teachers I was working with to organize the event wanted to find a way to include an inquiry-based question for students to answer. Their students have had a lot of practice with inquiry-based curriculm, which is a heavy component in the IB program, so it would have been a missed opportunity had we not tied IB in with math night.

We decided to come up with the open-ended question, What do you notice? for both K-2 and 3-5. Sometimes we spend a lot of time telling kids what to think so leaving the question open-ended gave them an opportunity to do their own thinking. Plus, this type of thinking ties in nicely with the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics.

For K-2, I decided to go with something visual and pulled a design from one of our Nifty Numbers Family Math Night banners. For the older students, I went with something a little more abstract…Pascal’s Triangle. Originally I had a visual question for the 3-5 group as well – see photo below – but changed my mind last minute. However, either question would have worked. In fact, the possibilities are endless.

The photo above shows the two questions along with student responses. Students who wrote an answer received an extra raffle ticket to put in the raffle jar.

For more What Do You Notice? posters.