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ACES Students Making Math Connections

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Students at Brewton Middle School have recently been learning about the ocean. Brewton Middle School is located just an hour north of the beautiful Gulf Shore, Alabama beaches. The school is an Alabama Reading Initiative School that believes in providing its students with enriching learning experiences.

Seventh grade students, in Mrs. Kirkland's mathematics classes, have been making connections between math and science using the ACES website. Students have been taking a hands-on approach to improving their ocean literacy, while reinforcing their math skills. In addition to learning about the ocean and researching marine ecosystems and marine animals, the students have tracked marine animals to collect real world data. This data was then used to create histograms, work central tendency math problems and practice converting metric units into customary units of measurement.

According to Mrs. Kirkland the ocean literacy enrichment project was a big hit with her students. One of the most frequent questions Mrs. Kirkland is asked by her math students is when are we ever going to use this concept? One of the great aspects of the ACES program, according to Mrs. Kirkland is that "students get to see how math is used in real world settings." She states, "It was a lot more fun for the students to collect the data and then solve the math problems, rather than working problems from a math book."

The unit also helped the students learn valuable research and technology skills. The highlights of the unit were making posters on the marine ecosystems that they studied and making power point presentations on the marine animals they had been tracking.

According to one of the seventh graders the ocean literacy unit was "awesome". Many students commented on what a fun unit it was. As one student remarked, "it's making me learn and it's fun!" Vice Principal Carrie Brown said the Ocean Literacy Project was a "great job of integrating math, technology, science and reading."