Interactive Projects Engage Students in Math and Science
education, math, schools, science, students,
In Angie Barrett’s fourth-grade class at Daniel Pratt Elementary School, science lessons include the study of electricity. But the students do much more than memorize the difference between series and parallel circuits.
“It culminates in them actually wiring a little house for electricity,” Barrett says. “They do it, and it’s wonderful. They don’t know they’re learning, because they’re having fun.”
Daniel Pratt is one of six Autauga County schools involved in AMSTI, the state-sponsored Alabama Math Science and Technology Initiative designed to better prepare students for a high-technology world.
Participating teachers attend two weeks of training during the summer, for which they receive a minimal stipend. They return to their classrooms armed with boxes of materials to create activities – such as wiring the miniature house – for their students.
The content of those boxes is valued at $1,200 to $1,500 each, yet there is no cost to individual school systems. That’s a winning proposition, says Greg Faulkner, superintendent of Autauga County Schools. He also praises the free teacher training.
“That gives the teachers more buy-in because they had fun learning it,” he explains.
He should know – he has attended the training himself. Also, his wife, Cathy Faulkner, who teaches third grade at Prattville Elementary School, is using AMSTI for the third year.
“She’s having a ball with it,” he says.
Faulkner has nothing but kudos for AMSTI’s interactive approach to learning.
“When you would go into classrooms of old, you would see desks lined up in straight rows and everybody sitting behind a desk and the teacher at the chalkboard,” he says. “Well, the children of today are no longer learning as well from that lecture approach. They are more multifaceted and more hands-on.” The idea behind AMSTI is to put children in groups and encourage them to tackle a project together, sharing the responsibilities and taking turns performing the different tasks required.
Barrett, a 19-year classroom veteran who has been using AMSTI’s math and science components since 2004, says one of the most rewarding aspects of the AMSTI approach is watching students who haven’t excelled academically in the past blossom.
“They’re showing other students how to do something, and I’m sitting there amazed at what I’m seeing,” she says. Once those students gain a little confidence, she adds, many go on to improve in other subjects because they know they can succeed.
And scores are up on tests and state achievement assessments, Faulkner says – proof that AMSTI is more effectively teaching math and science principles.
Story by Sharon H. Fitzgerald
