By Kristine Snodgrass, Staff Writer
MONTGOMERY — A high school math teacher’s idea for a game that helps students build their arithmetic skills while avoiding typical classroom boredom and frustration is featured this month in a national journal on education.
Montgomery High School teacher Daniel Fishman invented “DocFish,” a variation on the classic card game Go Fish. His detailed explanation of his game was featured as the cover article in this month’s issue of “Mathematics Teacher,” the journal of the National Council of Teachers and Mathematics.
The object of the game is to try to pair prime factors made up of the cards’ face values. All that is needed to play is two players and two decks of cards.
The game reinforces a range of skills including multiplication facts, simplifying radicals and factoring. Mr. Fishman developed the game after encountering trouble teaching the concepts of prime numbers and fully factored expressions to students who had never mastered multiplication facts.
”It evolved over a period of two years as I played prototype versions with my students and with indulgent family members,” he said.
The final version of the game is simple, fun and addictive for his students, said Mr. Fishman, who holds a doctorate degree in mathematics. He has taught Algebra II and AP Calculus at the high school since 2005.
The game’s name was derived from Mr. Fishman’s nickname used by his students when he taught at Highland Park High School, he explains in the article.
He teaches the game to students during his after-school office hours, or when a school activity disrupts the school day and he cannot move on with the normal curriculum.
”We are proud that others have a chance to share in the passion and creative energy Dan brings to mathematics that we have come to cherish,” district director of mathematics Christine Burton said.
For more information on the game, the article can be accessed online at www.nctm.org.
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