Figuring out the numbers game

Marisa O’Neil

Learning math is easier when you let your fingers do the walking,

students in Susie Farnsworth’s class learned Monday.

The second- and third-graders at Sonora Elementary School used a

large number grid to figure addition and subtraction problems. Each

box in the grid represented a number and all were lined up 10 to a

row.

“Put your fingers on the number of months in a year,” Farnsworth

instructed.

Little fingers went up in the air as students mentally counted

through the months. Adam Bernacchi, 7, gasped at his sudden epiphany

and placed his index finger on the number 12.

“Now add one,” Farnsworth said as fingers crept one box to the

right. “Subtract three, subtract four, add the number of days in the

week, subtract two, take away five.”

Fingers stepped up, down and side to side, keeping up with her

narrative until the final figure.

“That should be the number of sides in what figure?”

“A hexagon,” a few students, including 7-year-old Arleth Rivera,

replied.

Next, Farnsworth told the students to put away their number grids

and take out their white boards.

“Your brains are still asleep because it’s Monday,” Farnsworth

teased. “This is just a brain waker-upper, not math.”

Students cheered at the thought and she arranged cobalt blue

squares on the overhead projector. She grouped together one large

square made of 10 rows of 10, four separate rows of 10 and three

single small squares.

“Give me the whole number in standard form and expanded form,” she

said.

Kira Armao, 8, poked the end of her dry erase marker in the air,

counting the squares to herself. On her board, she wrote: “243” and

“200+40+3,” then held it up for the teacher to see.

After their brains were sufficiently awakened, they took out bags

filled with brightly colored squares, triangles, hexagons and other

shapes. As Farnsworth told them different ways to arrange and

maneuver them, 8-year-old Eric Paniagua stacked the slim shapes one

on top of the other.

Farnsworth told the students to use the shapes to create two

images that mirrored each other along a line of symmetry. Eric put

together an elaborate one with eight shapes, but bashfully covered it

up when Farnsworth walked through the classroom inspecting everyone’s

work.

At the other end of the room, she came across 7-year-old Roy

Asuega’s shapes -- arranged on a vertical line of symmetry, not a

horizontal, like everyone else’s was.

“Roy is my hero,” she exclaimed.

She recreated his work on the dark overhead projector and then

flipped the switch to display his innovative orientation. The

students gasped with excitement when they saw the shape.

“He thinks differently than we do,” she said. “And that’s OK.”

* IN THE CLASSROOM is a weekly feature in which Daily Pilot

education writer Marisa O’Neil visits a campus in the Newport-Mesa

area and writes about her experience.