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Photograph by Paul Myers
Thomas Sevigne (center) and other students work on a post-assessment test for a new summer school program in the Los Gatos Union School District. The program, Daves Summer Math Lab, taught third- through sixth-graders geometric concepts using art lessons.
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Math class takes on an artistic bent at a local summer school
By Rebecca Ray
The Los Gatos Union School District has held math summer school every year. But this year, the district did something different. Students entering grades 3-6 learned geometric concepts by doing art projects.
Before the summer school started, teachers chose students in the district who they thought needed the most support in math. The teachers then invited them to enroll in the three-week-long, three-hour-a-day program, which was held at Daves Avenue Elementary School.
At the Daves Summer Math Lab, students had few worksheets and no homework. Instead, they engaged in "bubbleology," the scientific study of bubbles, by blowing bubbles onto desktops, examining shapes inside the bubbles and blowing bubbles inside bubbles. They made "fanciful cities" by painting parallelograms--four-sided shapes with opposite sides that are parallel and equal--and made kites that were tetrahedrons (four-sided).
Carolyn McRoberts, a math resource teacher for the district during the regular school year, and Joanne Talesfore, the district's arts grant manager, developed the idea for the program. Geometry and art were easy to integrate because so much of geometry is art, McRoberts said. The strategy was that as the students did art projects, they would not only begin to think mathematically, but would become more excited about math and less afraid of it. McRoberts and Talesfore wanted students to realize that math is more than just arithmetic.
"You can see that art brings emotions to math, which gives kids more ownership of their work," said Wendy Dillingham, who taught fourth- and fifth-graders this summer. Dillingham teaches science at Fisher Middle School during the regular school year.
Each morning, students spent roughly 45 minutes playing number games or solving problems by doing "mental" math. Teachers encouraged them to use different strategies so that the students would gain confidence in their ability to solve problems. For instance, students learned they could solve the problem 4 x 27 by multiplying 4 and 20, and then adding it to 4 x 7. They also learned they could multiply 4 and 30, and then subtract the product of 4 x 3.
A grant from the Robert Noyce Foundation, for about $25,000, funded the math part of the program. The grant also paid for six of the 12 teachers, the three teacher leaders and staff development. Two teachers taught in each classroom, each containing 20 students. The district paid for the other six teachers.
Another grant, a five-year Cultural Initiatives Silicon Valley Grant, funded the arts portion. Since the 1999-2000 school year, the district has received money from the grant to integrate the arts into its K-5 curricula.
McRoberts and Talesfore recruited teachers who they thought were open to learning more about math and art. During staff development sessions, teachers looked at how the Japanese studied math. Unlike American students, who usually learn skills before being asked to solve word problems, students in Japan receive word problems before they learn the skills to solve them. Solving a word problem beforehand gives students a reason for wanting to learn the skills necessary to solve it, McRoberts said.
Fifth-grade teacher Michele Jessen said she loved the combination of the two disciplines. She said she planned to integrate the subjects in her class at Theuerkauf Elementary School in Mountain View during the regular school year.
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
