Right hand red, left hand blue

    “Board problems get boring, games are more interesting,” said math teacher Diane Briggs about her recent experiment to teach students using the exciting game of Twister.

    She used this interactive game to teach her IB Math Studies classes that math can be more then just textbook problems, but fun. Briggs’ students learned the difference between conditional probability and independence of events playing this game of probability.  She believes that using games will help her students, “understand it better, enjoy it, and remember it longer.”

    Her idea of teaching her students through games became a reality in November. Briggs described the event, which took place in her trailer as being very tight with desks packed tightly together. Despite the claustrophobia of her trailer, Briggs is confident in her approaches to teaching. Her students also think highly of their teacher and her style.

    “She always makes a lot of eye contact with us, and it makes me feel like she’s really connecting with us,” said senior Linda Nguyen. “She’s really engaging and enthusiastic about math which makes it more enjoyable.”

    Briggs also likes to have her classes engage in interactive activities both inside and outside of the classroom. “To analyze statistics, we tested how many licks on average it took to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop,” said Nguyen. “It was a fun homework assignment and I learned that it took 233 licks for me to get to the center of my Tootsie Roll Pop. “

    Briggs hopes by doing this, she will interest more people into IB Math Studies. No matter what method, she hopes to bring joy to learning, and get students excited for the real-life appliance to math.