The Wednesday Afternoon Adventure Club
A toolkit that supports skilled 3rd and 4th grade mathematicians in developing their spatial ability with the help of design and inquiry-based learning
R.L. Lugthart (TU Delft - Industrial Design Engineering)
M.A. Gielen – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Codesigning Social Change)
M. Sypesteyn – Mentor (TU Delft - Perceptual Intelligence)
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Abstract
The Netherlands is known to score well on guiding children to achieve a fundamental level in mathematics However, they could do better in guiding the children who already score well, so called skilled mathematicians. project focused on deigning a tool that would support this group of children, in the 3rd and 4th grade in learning spatial ability. This project was done in collaboration with ScienceHub TU Delft and the design goal was:
Design a tool that makes use of design and inquiry based learning in mathematics classes to improve the development of children’s spatial ability for skilled mathematicians at primary school in grades 3 and 4 in the Netherlands.
The methodologies that were used throughout this project were literature research, observations, meetings with experts, prototyping and user tests.
Some of the most important findings throughout the research phase were:
- There are three types of skilled mathematicians: good, quick and creative ones, each with different needs.
- Skilled mathematicians are sometimes not supported well because the education system or school has insufficient time or knowledge on how to do so.
- Spatial ability can be divided into five skills that are tested at primary school: visualisation, rotation, orientation, symmetry and spatial relations. However these skills, and the word ‘spatial ability’ is not mentioned, nor really know by teachers, let alone children.
- Spatial ability exercises are often 2D and sometimes unrealistic. Children would be better of with realistic and 3D exercises.
- Children are better of learning with an aspect of play.
The product that was designed is the Wednesday Afternoon Adventure Club toolkit. This toolkit consists of a booklet with exercises and additional physical, 3D, map, measuring tiles and characters. The booklet includes a comic story describing a story about five characters and throughout the booklet these characters phase ‘issues’ that result in mathematical, spatial exercises. The physical map is a direct translation of the world that the characters live in and so the story, and exercises can be directly followed, physically. The characters are based on the five spatial skills mentioned above and characterise these spatial skills with human aspects, allowing for a feeling of connection to what spatial ability means in real life situations.