Math teacher’s lesson plan wins prize
Teacher entered U.S. contest ‘just on a whim’
EDMONTON • A Saskatoon math teacher has won a $25,000 prize from a U.S. math museum for his lesson plan, which used dice to teach students about probability by holding an auction of potential dice-rolling outcomes in class.
Nat Banting, 32, a faculty member in the college of education department of curriculum studies at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, also teaches at Marion M. Graham Collegiate in Saskatoon. He submitted his lesson plan months ago, and found out in early December that he won.
“Still to this point it’s a little bit of disbelief,” Banting said of the prize. “I kind of entered just on a whim.”
Dice, Banting explained (painstakingly and with good cheer to a mathematically illiterate National Post reporter) are often used to teach students about probability: What are the chances, for example, you roll two dice and the total equals seven?
“I really like probability, that’s kind of one of my areas I really enjoy researching,” Banting said. “There’s more creative potential in the dice than teachers usually take advantage of.”
The lesson plan, meant for Grade 7 and 8 students, took it a step further: He put 15 of those possible outcomes of rolling two dice up for auction. Then groups of students were responsible for deciding which outcome was more valuable — that is, more likely to occur — and then bid on them.
Then, the dice were rolled, and the person who had “bought” the outcome — say, a double being rolled — won a prize.
“It prevents the thinking from stopping, once they have the calculation; the calculation is now the starting point for mathematizing,” Banting explained.
(The National Post reporter remained baffled by how this is possible to figure out, but Banting, who has 10 years experience, swears students got it.)
The whole thing, Banting said, was to have students talk about what should happen, and who therefore got a good deal, a likely outcome for cheap, or a bad deal, an expensive but unlikely outcome. And, of course, not what should happen — but what did happen.
“That’s when you start to talk about who got lucky and who was unlucky.”
He said his students liked the contest, designed to “build an opportunity for these kids to interact with mathematics,” and it was rambunctious, with students consulting each other in hushed tones.
“It wasn’t just noise … but this was mathematical noise,” he said. “It’s engagement with the curriculum and once you hit that sweet spot it kinda just hums along.”
Banting is the first person outside the United States to receive the award, which he’ll get formally at a ceremony in New York City on Jan. 7. The Rosenthal Prize, awarded annually by the National Museum of Mathematics in New York, is meant to “recognize and promote hands-on math teaching in upper-elementary and middle-school classrooms.”
As for the cash, it’ll help pay for the trip with his wife, and help pay for some more graduate schooling.
“Things like this happen all the time in schools,” Banting said. “Every day we go in and we say ‘how can we serve these kids best?’ ”