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SOLEDAD — Main Street Middle School hosted its first Math Festival on Feb. 22. Prior to 2018, Main Street teachers and math students participated in a combined Math Festival with Soledad High School.
This year the school chose to do an Algebra Math Festival through the California Math Council. The Festival consists of 16 work stations that students go through at their own pace.
“We had a Math Festival during the day where each student spent 40 minutes exploring the math problems and trying out different things,” said Math Lead Jenn Clark. “They were doing problems that they are not necessarily going to do normally or that they might not try on their own.”
One of the problems the students tried out involved a triangle that had different squares.
The students were tasked with finding the number to make the square equal out. The students visited the stations in groups of twos and completed tasks with each other. When the students returned to the class they discussed the problems with their fellow classmates.
In the evening, there was a second math festival that included the community. Parents were able to test their math skills along with their sons and daughters and compete against each other to solve math problems.
“It was really interesting to see the parents working well with the children and the children then explaining the math to kids,” said Clark. “When the kids couldn’t get it there was some really good conversations between the parents and the students.”
Clark said the day Math Festival went well with a lot of the students voting that they would want to see the Festival again next year.
Clark would have liked to see more participation in the evening festival from elementary students.
Next year, Clark plans to advertise the event more and have two festivals, one in the fall and another in the spring. The festivals would focus on geometry and algebra.
“It was pretty fun seeing kids and parents collaborating together to work on math,” said math teacher Kevin Pena.
