New course teaches math with pizza and games

Fun with fractions

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buy this photo Marian McElroy teaches kids fractions through the telling of a folk tale using percussion instruments on July 21 at Gilmore Middle School. The summer math class is part of a Lighted Schoolhouse pilot program called 4-real Math. Journal Times photo by Scott Anderson scott.anderson@journaltimes.com. Buy this photo at JTreprints.com

RACINE - Nine, 18, 27, 36, 45, 54, 63, 72, 81, 90.

Summer school instructor Marian McElroy rattled off the multiples of nine from memory in 3.8 seconds as her students squealed in disbelief.

"Who can beat me?" McElroy asked, bouncing on her toes at the front of the classroom.

Quayshawn Malone, 12, was up to the challenge. The Gilmore Middle School seventh-grader tried it standing, sitting at his desk and pacing, but ended up cycling through the numbers in 12.8 seconds.

Anissa Mueller, also 12, came close to beating McElroy with a time of 3.9 seconds.

Games like this one are only part of the new way students this summer learned math through a hands-on course that approaches arithmetic with activities like eating pizza and playing basketball. Called 4 Real Math, the class and its approach will be implemented this fall into math curriculum at Gilmore Middle School with plans to expand it to other Racine Unified schools eventually, said Sherrie Hopkins, co-coordinator of the summer program.

The 4 Real Math course was one of several offered this summer at Gilmore, 2330 Northwestern Ave., by Racine Unified's Lighted Schoolhouse Program, which operates at 22 different district sites and offers alternative teaching geared to address students' specific skill gaps. The hands-on learning style used in 4 Real Math comes from Performigence, a computer company that developed the educational program.

"It's so important to do things the students can relate to," said McElroy, Performigence's director of 4 Real Math. "If they can't do middle school math and fractions, they'll struggle in algebra in high school."

To make sure that doesn't happen, the course used basketball shots to teach linear equations about the slope of a line and used fraction tiles, interactive story problems, pizza pie slices and bowling to teach fractions.

"They would bowl and how many pins they knocked down was the numerator and how many they started with was the denominator," said Joe Miller, course instructor and former Gilmore student teacher.

To teach equations about distance, Miller had his nearly two dozen students run a timed 40-yard dash. He said it seemed like most of the kids had never learned math this way.

"It seemed like something new for the kids," Miller said. "They all seemed pretty interested and they all stuck with it."

Anissa, a Gilmore seventh-grader, was one of those kids.

She said in sixth-grade, fractions were really hard, especially multiplying and dividing them, but now they are her favorite part of math.

"With the story and basketball, it's easier for me," Anissa said. "Instead of doing worksheets, we're outside playing games."

Quayshawn echoed Anissa, saying the real life examples were better than just looking at numbers.

"Hey Mr. Miller," Anissa said in the middle of class, "I like math. I didn't really like it in school but now that we're doing in here, I like it."

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