By: Stephanie Mardekian

School: Montgomery Upper Middle School

Grade Levels: Seventh Grade

Academic Focus/

Core Curriculum Standards:

9.2A, B, C, D

Language Arts: 3.3, 3.4

In the fall, basic skills students practiced multiplication and division of fractions by making snack mix. They then shared their snacks and played games with a second grade class. In the spring, students will create "Function Machines" out of tissue boxes to help practice recognizing and working with mathematical functions. Once made, the students will share and work with their function machines with a second grade class and teach them what they did while practicing their math skills with them.

Project will take place in April and the visit will be for one day.

Tissue boxes, toilet paper rolls, markers, arts and crafts resources.

Mathematics: In the fall, students practiced applying math with fractions by measuring proportions of snack mix recipes to create the proper amount. In the spring, students will use the function machines to practice basic math functions and help the second graders practice them.

Consumer, Family, & Life Skills: Students practice working with students of a younger age and helping them learn on their own level of education. Also, the students work on making the younger students enthusiastic about learning.

Core Ethical Values:

Responsibility: Students are learning to recognize the impact that they can have on younger students and the importance of being good role models.

Caring: By working with the younger students, the seventh graders focus on relating with the students and interesting them in mathematics.

Sharing: Students will have made the projects themselves and will be working with the second graders, sharing their work and teaching them.

Hurdles Encountered:

Hurdles: Working out the schedules for the classes.

Solution: Easy – the teachers examined their schedules and came to an agreement.

Performance-based Education: The students’ ability to work with the younger students plays an important role in the project, along with their ability to use their function machines to help teach the other students about basic math skills.

Cooperative Learning:  Students are working together with the second graders practicing their skills and enjoying watching the younger students learn.

This project focuses on cooperation and responsibility for the older students in teaching the younger students and using their own skills while also being good role models for the students.

The students will celebrate by teaching the younger students and sharing their machines.

The younger students truly enjoy working with the older students, who in return feel appreciated. The younger children write notes of appreciation.

Key Findings: Both classes find this project to be a bonding experience.

The older students are working with the younger students at the middle school.

Once the students have come back from the elementary school, they will discuss the experience in the classroom with the teacher and go over what they learned and how this impacted them. Also, they will write a short, reflective piece on which pillar they observed in completing this project.

Means of Assessment: Rubric developed to rate students during various stages of the project.