Rockford — The library at North Rockford Middle School this spring was converted into a mathematical menagerie, packed with pigs, elephants, dogs, lobsters — even unicorns, each built by students as they made their way through a recent lesson on geometry, surface area and volume.
When the time came for seventh-graders in Katie Sizemore’s advanced math class to demonstrate their mastery of these concepts, Sizemore opted for something other than a test.
‘It gave them the opportunity to be creative, and in math they don’t always get to do that.’
— teacher Katie Sizemore
Instead, she asked students to design and construct their own three-dimensional animals with boxes and other pieces of cardboard, measuring the area and volume of the different individual components along the way before calculating the dimensions of the whole.
Once the animals were designed, built, measured and graded, students put them on display in the school library.
Creating their Creatures
Abbi Dash, one of Sizemore’s students, explained the process.
“We started with finding an animal we wanted to do; then we drew it,” Abbi said. “And we measured it and found our dimensions and lengths for it, and we found the surface area and volume of the shapes we used to make the animal.”
Once the animals were assembled, Abbi said, students added up the dimensions to determine the total surface area and volume of each animal.
“Then we decorated them to make them look like the animal we chose,” she said.
Abbi was in a group with classmates Ruby Zawacki and Jazelle Elkins, and the trio chose to make an elephant.
“We had an idea for the trunk — we used a slinky,” Ruby said, because, as Abbi noted, “We thought it would make it more unique.”
The trio relished the opportunity to get creative with a math project. They gave their elephant big, bright, cartoonish eyes and a twisted tail to add to its uniqueness, Jazelle said.
In another group, students Lucy O’Rourke and Kenzie Kelbel chose to make a pig, built with two rectangular prisms making up the body, and paper-towel rolls for the legs and snout.
“I thought it was fun to decorate it and make it the best it could be,” said Lucy.
All the seventh-graders agreed that the project was more fun than any test.
“It encourages people to want to work on it because it’s something fun instead of just sitting there writing,” Abbi said. “We got to be more hands-on with it.”
“I like to learn visually,” said Jazelle. “It definitely helped learning the dimensions and shapes, with something that’s right in front of you.”
The students said it’s a lot easier to learn and understand concepts of geometry when you’re actually interacting with a real-life, three-dimensional object, and applying what you learn.
Something Different
This was Sizemore’s first time teaching the 3D animal project, but it went so well that she’s planning to turn it into an annual activity for her advanced learners.
She said the project is “a little more hands-on, a little more real-life” than traditional tests.
“It gave them the opportunity to be creative, and in math they don’t always get to do that,” said Sizemore. “It was just kind of a change of pace and something different. … I think that’s what I liked about it the best was just seeing some of them come out of their element a little bit.”
Sizemore said the project involved teamwork, critical thinking and problem-solving.
“It was super fun to watch them build and try to figure out how to get it all to fit together and piece together and stay standing,” she said. “There was a little engineering, too — figuring out how proportionally it would work out. It wraps in some of that engineering piece that some of these advanced math kids may do some day.”
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