About 225 participants — students and their families — came to solve math problems.
All hands were on deck for Van Zant Elementary School’s annual Math Night on Dec. 7. The pirate-themed event encouraged families of students to work together and have fun with math in order to score some treasure.
About 225 participants — students and their families — came to solve math problems. Students were tasked with finding problems hung-up around the school, marked with x’s on the walls. After solving all the problems for their grade-level, students won gold doubloons, fake tattoos, and pirate pencils.
The staff also set up a pirate background perfect for photos, complete with pirate props. After finishing the math problems, families could visit the holiday shop run by the parent teacher organization.
Van Zant Elementary School math coach Carol Parsons has been organizing the event for about a decade.
“The idea is to get everyone together and have fun with math,” Parsons said. “Students are supposed to work with their family and do the problems together.”
“Michael really wanted to come,” said Mary Crouse, mother of a third-grader. “He likes to participate. It’s fun for him.”
In addition to Math Night, the students at Van Zant have been getting creative with math all month long.
To celebrate Computer Science Education Week (Dec. 5 through Dec 11), students in Scott Katz’s second-grade class participated in the Hour of Code movement.
Using Tynker, an interactive, visual programming game, the students created a custom character and learned how to program that character to navigate obstacles, collect candy, and get back to the computer.
In addition, two other classes played “Code-A-Pillar,” using math skills to plot obstacle courses, measure distance, and code the program to successfully navigate the course.
