In the spring of 2015, the Adult Program at Sullivan County BOCES, NY hosted a full day Student Numeracy Adventures Day. This guide is the result of that fair and the other math fairs that followed. Patricia Helmuth, who is a NYSED/CUNY teacher leader and teaches with Sullivan County BOCES in Monticello, NY, put together this guide. Patricia and her fellow teachers brought all their students together for a day of student driven, no-stress math activities accessible to students at all ability levels: ABE, HSE, and ESOL students. The math fair included games, Internet activities, and numerous problem-solving adventures that utilized manipulatives. Teachers prepared for the event by experiencing a mini-version of a math fair in advance.

The math fair guide includes everything you need to do a math fair at your program, including planning, promoting, preparing for the event, and all the activities, games, and problems you would need for the event.

Patricia packaged the math fair materials as part of a mini-grant project with the NYSED/CUNY Teacher Leader program. Since then, Patricia has presented the math fair at multiple conferences as a way to support mathematical mindsets and promote a problem-solving approach to teaching mathematics. The math fair has even been done in a prison by Wendy Bopp at Greene Correctional Facility in Coxsackie, NY.

We highly recommend these materials and the idea of a math fair. It’s a great way to bring your students, teachers and other staff together to change math mindsets and have fun. Please share your questions below and report back if you have a math fair at your program.

There are excellent activities here in the following content areas:

Area, Geometry, Volume, Number and Quantity, Perimeter, Positive and Negative Integers, Probability, Pythagorean Theorem, Reading Graphs, Introducing Functions, Developing Algebraic Reasoning through Visual Patterns, Warm-ups