When students rush up to a teacher after a state standardized math exam and babble about how great they feel, and how sure they are that they passed it, you know the teacher is doing something right:
Danielle Rooney, a teacher at the Brooklyn College Academy intermediate school, tries to take the "math phobia" out of her eighth-grade students. But when they rushed up to her after taking the state math test in the spring, saying they aced it, she thought they were getting a bit carried away.
"I had almost the entire class come running to me saying 'I think this is the first time I've ever passed," Rooney said. "I was just like, `Let's not get our hopes up.' "
But her students did, in fact, tackle the key standardized test spectacularly, allowing the school yesterday to register the biggest bounce in eighth grade scores of any city in the city. The portion of the school's eighth-graders who met the state's math standards skyrocketed from 8 percent in 2002 — a continuation of almost zero gain in the last few years to a whopping 73 percent on the test given last spring.
Holy quadratics, Batman! That's almost unbelievable. Fewer than 30 students tok the mathe test - Brooklyn College Academy is a small school - but that small sample size in no way downplays the importance of what Ms. Rooney has accomplished.
Rooney,in her fourth year as a teacher, and principal Juliana Rogers said they made instructional changes last year. They got rid of the old curriculum, explained the test scoring system to students, set up a peer teaching system, and made learning fun, finding novel ways to tap the energy of their adolescent charges.
For example, in "math basketball," teams of eighth graders must solve a problem within the time allotted. When the computation is written down, the paper is crumpled and a team member sits on a chair and throws the ball five feet away from the "basketball hoop" — a federal post office box with a hoop and net drawn on the blackboard over it. If it gets in and if the answer is right – Rooney says she stretches out the excitement by unballing the math paperwork slowly - the team wins three points.
Good for them. The "peer teaching" system is probably very important. I've heard of studies suggesting that black students perform much better in math classes when taught to work in groups, do homework together, and challenge one another - strategies that Asian students are more likely to use.
I also like the "math basketball" idea. I remember reading in the books of the late Sam Levenson, which describe his imaginative teaching ideas. He was a very creative, gentle, and funny man who went from teaching to writing humorous books (he also wrote the beautiful poem that many attribute to Audrey Hepburn).
He once taught Spanish by creating "Spanish baseball." Kids stood at "home plate" and he lobbed a word at them. If they got it right, they got to advance a base. To paraphrase what he said, they hit, they ran, they yelled, and sometimes fights broke out - but they learned Spanish.
Posted by kswygert at October 22, 2003 01:19 PM