Donating to SPU |   053 491 0000 |   [email protected] |   Vacancies View current jobs |   Employee Portal

Fishbowls, beans, fake money, mum, dad, gogo and mathematics

What do these have to do with mathematics? In this case, everything.

The University of Free State’s (UFS) Family Math initiative is a programme, funded by SANRAL and developed by the Science for- the-Future (S4F) employees at UFS. Dr Cobus van Breda, Programme Director for Science-for-the-Future, and his team established the S4F programme and Sol Plaatje University (SPU) is one of the partner universities.

The development of this programme considers the enormous challenges encountered by South African teachers which include, among others, a lack of resources, inadequate parental involvement and the challenge of discrepancies between the language of teaching and learning, and learners’ home language. The Family Math programme aims to address these issues by not only involving teachers, but also involves learners and their parents.

SPU was invited to collaborate on this project and Grade 3 teachers in the Warrenton and Jan Kempdorp areas attended hands-on learning sessions conducted by Dr Glynnis Daries, Head of Education Studies and Dr Tracey Herman, Lecturer for Psychology in Education in the School of Education. These sessions took place at the Andalusia Primary School in Jan Kempdorp.

In attendance were 29 teachers from 10 local schools as well as the Chief Education Specialist for Foundation Phase, Mrs Mosadie Kruger, and the subject advisor for Foundation Phase in the Francis Baard area, Mrs Ntoaki Mosinki.

The sessions allowed teachers to explore and ‘play’ with concrete materials such as paper fish and fishbowls to understand problem solving approaches, beans and a number-line to encourage mental math and fraction cards. All these activities are aligned to CAPS and can be used to facilitate various topics in mathematics.

The teachers then held parent workshops at their respective schools where parents sat with their children and together worked through the activities. This enabled parents (and in many cases grandparents, aunts, uncles or older siblings) to use the resources at home to assist learners to consolidate work done in class. This initiative was a huge success as parents became involved in their children’s mathematics education.

More to explore

Wildlife expert, Prof Do Linh San joins SPU

Sol Plaatje University (SPU) is pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Emmanuel Do Linh San, a distinguished wildlife ecologist and conservationist. Prof Do Linh San joins the Zoology Department in the Faculty of Natural and Applied Sciences. Prof Do

Celebrating continuity: SPU inaugurates 2024/2025 Student Representative Council

On Friday, 1 November 2024, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research, Innovation, and Postgraduate Studies, Professor Debra Meyer, presided over SPU’s annual Student Representative Council (SRC) Inauguration Dinner. The event was dedicated to formally welcome the incoming SRC for the 2024/2025 term, while

Vice-Chancellor highlights vision for SPU’s Cycle Challenge on OFM

SPU’s Vice-Chancellor and Principal, Prof Andrew Crouch, was recently featured on OFM (94.2 FM) to discuss the upcoming 4th annual Vice-Chancellor’s Cycle Challenge on 9 November 2024. In the interview, Prof Crouch expressed his vision for the event to become widely recognised