Photograph by Paul Myers
Fourth-grader Kevin Benzing (right) answers a question during a session with Math Docent volunteer Kevin Amato (center) and classmate Carolyn Chen at Argonaut Elementary School.
Argonaut's Math Docents say numbers game is fun
By Rebecca Ray
"A farmer has nine tomato plants and five pumpkin vines. Five tomatoes grow on each tomato plant, and three pumpkins grow on each pumpkin vine. How many tomatoes and pumpkins does the farmer have?"
This may sound like an algebra problem for students in middle or high school. But recently, fourth-graders at Argonaut Elementary School worked on a similar problem. However, they didn't use algebra to solve it. They learned problem-solving strategies from the Math Docents, a group of parent volunteers that strives to inspire students to love math.
Since September 2001, the Math Docents have come to fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms at Argonaut. Like the Art Docents, a predominantly volunteer group that presents art lessons at local schools, one Math Docent presents a "problem-solving strategy of the day" during sessions, while other parents help out in the classroom. After students learn the strategy, they break into groups and try to solve problems using the strategy. If a group goes down the wrong track while discussing the problem, a parent docent asks group members questions to steer them in the right direction, says Nancy Cheung, who heads the fifth-grade Math Docents program.
The Math Docents plan to conduct 10, one-hour sessions this year for each of the two grades.
Sue Brooks, principal at Argonaut, says that what impresses her most about the Math Docents is how the parents model a love of math for the students.
The idea for the Math Docents began during the 2000-2001 school year, when Argonaut parents talked about starting a Math Olympiad program at the school. They had seen the program at Foothill Elementary School and liked what they saw.
A nonprofit public foundation called Mathematical Olympiads for Elementary and Middle Schools, which seeks to give children opportunities to engage in creative problem solving, hosts the Olympiad. Students participate in the Olympiad by joining math clubs at their schools and taking math tests, which the foundation prepares, each month. After students complete five tests and foundation members score them, the foundation awards students prizes based on their scores.
The Argonaut parents' discussions evolved into getting fourth- and fifth-graders involved in the Math Olympiad, which is for fourth-through-eighth-graders, and increasing parent involvement in classrooms. The parents then discussed teaching students who participated in the Olympiad problem-solving techniques to help them improve their test scores.
But some parents, including Kevin Amato, who is in charge of the fourth-grade Math Docents program, recommended teaching problem-solving strategies to every fourth- and fifth-grader. Amato works at Intel Corp., which places importance on encouraging every student to excel in math and science, and he wanted to show students that math wasn't just problems in a book. He said he wanted them to see that people use math in everyday life and that math can be fun.
So at the beginning of this school year, both a Math Olympiad program and the Math Docents program at Argonaut were born.
Amato says the Math Docents program is designed to be highly enjoyable for students. Assignments aren't graded. Also, problems require students to think outside the box and use parts of their brains they normally don't use for schoolwork, Amato says.
The program is open to all Argonaut parents, and more than 40 are involved. Before the parent volunteers plan lessons, teachers tell them what topics their classes will cover. Volunteers then choose problems that match the subject matter.
This year, the Argonaut Parent-Teacher Association allocated the Math Docents $300, to buy instructional materials. Also, Intel donated $1,800 to the school's math and science programs.
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