A trip into ‘real world math’

Posted 2/11/14

Try doing this while dribbling a basketball:

Pick up a card; while carrying it, dribble to a second station, where you pick up a second card, and then go to a third station, where you’re going …

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A trip into ‘real world math’

Counting on an answer…and he got it: Scott School second grade teacher Deborah Johnson helps Connor Holroyd, who is a kindergartener at Randall Holden, figure out the cost of an item at the snack store Thursday night. The snack store was one of 11 activities of Math Night at Scott School, an event, as organizer Barbara Pellegrino explained, to bring students and parents together for “real world math.”

Warwick Beacon photos by John Howell

HOW THE GAME IS PLAYED: Dawn Romans explains the rules of math basketball to Jack Colvin and Emmitt Rattey.

BUILDINGS OF TAPE: Using pre-measured strands of colored tape, corridor walls were transformed into canvases for buildings. Working on her building is Hope Flaherty

MATH NIGHT ORGANIZERS: Jill Petrarca and Barbara Pellegrino planned and ran the math night held Thursday at Scott School.

MUSIC BY THE GLASS: Using a wooden spoon, fifth-grader Kaylie Howland plays a scale created by music teacher Lindsey Wood by filling glasses to different levels.

MEASURING UP: Mollie Cunningham with the building she designed.

WHAT’S THE TAB? Joseph Meyer looks on as his daughter, Isabella, tallies the cost of the items selected from a restaurant menu.

Posted Tuesday, February 11, 2014 1:00 pm

Try doing this while dribbling a basketball:

Pick up a card; while carrying it, dribble to a second station, where you pick up a second card, and then go to a third station, where you’re going to get instructions.

Sounds like the Amazing Race?

Not quite, although this is a form of travel.

The traveling is in the mind and that comes when you look at the first two cards, which are numbers, and you do what the third card tells you, like add those numbers or subtract them. And don’t forget, you can’t stop dribbling the whole time.

Scott School students Jack Colvin and Emmitt Rattey were up for the challenge Thursday night and so were dozens more of their classmates.

The combination of mental and physical exercises was the creation of physical education teacher Dawn Romans. It was one of 11 activities students and their parents could choose to participate in during the school’s fourth annual math night.

“Kids do pretty well in reading,” said first grade teacher Barbara Pellegrino, who organized the night with Jill Petrarca of the school’s PTA. But, she notes, many children don’t make a connection between math and what goes on outside the classroom. The aim of math night, she explained, is to show the value of math in the “real world.”

It’s doubtful that dribbling a basketball while adding or subtracting has a lot of day-to-day application, unless perhaps it has to do with contracts with NBA teams. In that case, the numbers can be mind-boggling.

But seriously, consider the value of knowing how to read a menu and calculate the cost of an order before you place it, so that the tab doesn’t arrive and then you discover you don’t have enough money.

Joseph Meyer was working on that with his daughter, Isabella, at the make believe restaurant. Isabella took her order seriously. She read the menu and wrote down the cost of each item before tallying it. What was her favorite food?

“Mac and cheese,” she said excitedly.

Alas, there was no mac and cheese on the menu.

Pellegrino said another goal was to bring parents and their children together for an educational activity. One hundred students and their parents turned out. Making it even better, the students who participated in at least four activities were entered into a raffle to win games. And a big incentive was passes on homework.