During the Plymouth School Board meeting on March 5, kindergarten students from Menominee Elementary demonstrated how they solve math problems using a 3 Act Task method. Menominee Principal, Steven Boyer, introduced teachers Kerry Johnson and Julie Good who have incorporated the method into their curriculums to teach addition and subtraction. Johnson and Good attended the Duke Energy Conference last year where they were introduced to the new way to present math concepts.
Boyer said, “Do we teach students math to solve problems or do we solve problems to teach students math?” He said the way teachers are presenting math helps them to solve real-world problems.
Students Madison Green, Joey Christiansen, Valentyn Trevino and Colt Marchesi were given small packages of Starburst and Skittles candies and asked to use clues to guess how many candies were in each. The students wrote out their estimates, counted the actual items and then used addition and subtraction to find the differences between their guesses and the actual counts.
Carol Anders Correspondent
