JMU's Senior Convocation took place Thursday night of graduation week. The students' purple cap-and-gown attire was their ticket into the event presided over by President Jonathan R. Alger. Read More
JMU's Senior Convocation took place Thursday night of graduation week. The students' purple cap-and-gown attire was their ticket into the event presided over by President Jonathan R. Alger. Read More
JMU's Senior Convocation took place Thursday night of graduation week. The students' purple cap-and-gown attire was their ticket into the event presided over by President Jonathan R. Alger. Read More
Grant Funds Pilot Program Aimed At Improving Math Scores
The test scores
don't lie. Year after year, Virginia middle school students struggle with very
basic mathematics.
In an attempt to
improve those scores, four teachers from Harrisonburg Public Schools and four
teachers from Page County Public Schools will participate in a pilot program
that will attempt to make mathematics less abstract and easier to grasp by
providing an earth science context.
"Just
linear systems are beyond some kids," said Dr. Eric Pyle, professor of
geology and environmental science at James Madison University. "But if I
told you what the line represented, the line was the amount of sediment vs.
stream velocity, OK, now I can handle that."
Pyle has
received $149,577 from the National Science Foundation to test the idea over
the next two years. The eight participating teachers will begin training on
Monday, June 25, on ways to implement the material. The program requires a math
teacher and a science teacher from each of the four participating
schools—Skyline Middle School in Harrisonburg, Harrisonburg High School, Luray
Middle School and Page County High School—to work in teams, Pyle said.
The program will
start with teachers in each team alternating time teaching and observing the
other teach so they can discuss how to improve the teaching. In the end, Pyle
said, the teachers are improving and the students are the beneficiaries.
"If I have these two teachers in a room at the same time and you can't
tell the math teacher from the science teacher, then it has worked," he
said.
The first year
of the pilot will involve organizing and integrating the curriculum and the
second year will be spent designing a site-based case study that could lead to
expanding the program to more schools and school districts, Pyle said.
"We're
trying to change the rules a little bit," he said. "Let's turn this
problem sideways and look at it from a different perspective. And that's what
we want to do, turn this problem sideways and say, 'What would happen
if?'"
To read about more academic accomplishments, check the scholarly news section of Madison Scholar, the online journal of scholarly work at JMU.
