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Richey Students Did The Monster Math

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By KLINT LOWRY | The Suncoast News

Published: October 29, 2008

NEW PORT RICHEY - What do Halloween and math have in common? Both can either be fun or mysterious and scary to school children.

About 80 Richey Elementary School students were eager to stay after school last Tuesday to work on their math, as the lesson included games, crafts, snow cones and popcorn. The event was called "Spooky Measurement Mania Math," and it was a seasonally themed part of a much larger yearlong emphasis on math skills.

"During the summer, after we got our FCAT scores, we realized increasing our math proficiency was a needed area," Assistant Principal Lee-Anne Yerkey said.

The school put together a Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test "math task force" of about 15 staff members to come up with ways to address the issue. The strategy includes monthly after-school math nights that would parallel the particular element of math being focused on in class. For example, this month's topic is measurements and next month's will be geometry.

At each event, several stations are set up with activities related to the topic. The activities have the advantage of presenting concepts in ways that are visual and tactile, letting the senses be part of the learning process.

While songs like "The Monster Mash" and "Werewolves of London" played over a speaker system, students moved from station to station. At one station, they pieced together a character called "Gallon Man," using pieces that show the relative sizes of cups, pints, quarts and gallons.

At another, students discovered if they were a "square." They measured their height and arm spans to discover how close they are to being the same.

Fourth-grade teacher Alissa Cooker's station made full use of the Halloween theme by using pumpkins to give real meaning to numbers associated with measuring. First, the students were asked to pick up a pumpkin and guess how much they think it weighed. Then they set it on a scale.

"I think it's a hard concept for kids to grasp how heavy something is," Cooker said.

For younger children, things are either heavy or light. A child picks up a pumpkin, thinks it's heavy and assumes that means it must weigh whatever number equals "heavy" in their minds.

Fourth-grader Alan Michael Coy provided the perfect example. When he first lifted the pumpkin, he figured it must weigh 90 pounds.

But then Cooker had him think about something he was familiar with, his toy trucks at home. Those only weigh about a pound each, so he imagined how many trucks he would have to pick up at once to feel as heavy as the pumpkin.

With that in mind, his second guess came close to the pumpkin's real weight of 11.6 pounds. Later, he learned how the eyes can be deceived by guessing how long a piece of yarn would have to be to go all the way around the pumpkin.

At another station, teacher Laura Montgomery was helping students make beaded necklaces. Each bead is a quarter-inch thick, Montgomery explained, and the children are stringing them four at a time, ending up with what amounts to a ruler they can wear.

"Make-and-take" activities are a regular part of these after school parties, explained Montgomery, who was in charge of organizing this month's math party.

Another advantage to the monthly parties is it plays to one of Richey Elementary School's strengths - the level of parental involvement. Moms, dads and older siblings are often right there playing along, helping and getting a feel for what's going on in class.

"If children are really going to learn, it has to go outside the classroom," Yerkey said.

The school has the figures to back up that philosophy, Montgomery added.

"Last year, we came up tremendously in (FCAT) writing, and we did the same thing, we formed a task force, and we went from No. 25 in the county to No. 2 in writing," Montgomery said.

If the same can be done with math, those are figures they can live with.

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