Clover students see math come alive on Imagineering day

What’s the fewest number of squares, octagons and triangles needed to fill a large rectangle? What type of Spirograph gear creates a floral design with the most petals?

And however do you get the colored balls inside a cube to align so the same color is on each side of the cube?

Fifty-one Bethel Elementary School fifth-grade students explored these problems and many others last week as they learned about math in many real-life applications.

The students weren’t bored, or confounded, or scratching their heads in frustration. In fact, they seemed to be having a great time.

“It’s pretty fascinating,” said Morgan Hamer, 11. “We get to learn about all the different ways things are mathematical.”

It was the second year of Bethel’s Imagineering Math event, created by fifth-grade math teacher Patricia Smith to help students see and understand math as it applies to real life.

“I believe my students are gaining a confidence to think mathematically, to problem-solve, to be willing to ask questions,” said Smith. She also said they’re learning “to be willing to make mistakes and try again, to persevere.”

In the second year, Smith teamed with language arts and social studies teacher Lee Pearson to offer more math exhibits.

“This is the way learning should be,” Pearson said. “This is nothing they would learn in a book. I think they are making connections, and I think they are going to be able to apply these later.”

Smith said the students spent the week exploring the exhibits, first on their own, then with the guidance of a teacher.

Many students were enthused about the chance to grab math with both hands. “It’s really fun, because you learn more and experience more,” said Zaske Her, 11.

On Friday, the teachers and their students also invited parents, school board members, local officials and others in to their classroom to see how and what students are learning.

In one exhibit, students used a set of plastic interlocking gears of different sizes attached to a panel, in an attempt to use the fewest gears to connect two gears on each side of the panel.

In a geo soap-bubble exhibit, students used metal frames with different geometric shapes dipped in detergent to create soap bubbles.

Students discovered a variety of two- and three-dimensional shapes and a special property of bubbles, called surface tension, that causes a liquid to use a minimum of space.

Ginger Bowman, president of the Clover LEAF Foundation, which contributed a $1,000 grant for the Imagineering Math event, said she was impressed with what she saw.

“I thought that was an amazing display of the possibilities of learning math,” Bowman said. “I’m so star struck. I never imagined you could be this creative with math.”

Bowman said she was thrilled “to see the excitement of the kids. So many of us are visual learners, and they are able to learn by seeing this.”

Smith was costumed for the day as a bright character she called Paty Mathematica, who wore a bright green ruler and protractors for oversized eyeglasses, a vest and bright purple-striped tights.

Smith said that part of the inspiration came from a mathematics museum in Manhattan.

She said her students couldn’t visit the museum, so she came up with the idea to create her own equivalent.

This story was originally published April 17, 2015 at 4:40 PM with the headline "Clover students see math come alive on Imagineering day."