Used in 18 southern California schools, the program has led to improvements in students’ rational number understanding and executive functioning skills.
Lourdes Acevedo-Farag helped create Fraction Ball in 2018, when, through lucky timing, the charter school where she taught middle school math — El Sol Science and Arts Academy of Santa Ana — had not yet painted lines on the school’s outdoor basketball court.
Working with researchers at University of California, Irvine’s School of Education, as well as other teachers at the school, Acevedo-Farag began developing Fraction Ball as a way to help her students better understand fractions and decimals in relation to whole numbers.″We know that rational numbers are really like the gatekeeper to algebra,” said Acevedo-Farag, who has since left the classroom to pursue a Ph.D in education at UC Irvine.
Megan Brunner, associate director of research and learning at Advanced Education Research and Development Fund’s EF+Math Program, said there is research showing that when students have stronger executive functioning skills, achievement gaps decrease for historically underserved students.
The work to understand equity-centered educational experiences through math instruction and executive functioning skill-building is “really about helping students be agents over their own learning… and moving away from some of the historically kind of deficit thinking around executive functions,” Brunner said.
Acevedo-Farag added that for Fraction Ball specifically, participating students can strengthen their cognitive, physical, executive functioning, listening and collaboration skills — all while playing a fun game.
“As a teacher of 12 years, I saw we either are teaching executive functioning skills, or we’re teaching math, and Fraction Ball is the first time I saw that we’re doing it together. And it’s working,” she said.
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