Trinity students lead math and science workshops in Hartford schools

For the Community Learning component of our Educ 350: Teaching and Learning seminar in Spring 2019, we guided nine Trinity students on designing and leading math and science workshops for 4th thru 8th grade students in Hartford schools. Trinity students created web portfolios of their workshops, featuring inquiry-based curricular materials, video clips of classroom learning, and their personal reflections on what worked and what they would revise for next time. Thanks to the teachers and coordinators who generously welcomed our Trinity students into their classrooms: Kristen Crawford (math teacher at ELAMS elementary school), Amy Dougan (science teacher at McDonough Middle School), Adam Smith (math teacher at Environmental Science Magnet School), and Beatrice Alicea (program manager at the J-Z Academic Mentoring Program with Hartford Magnet Trinity College Academy).

Joseph Orosco ‘19 and Allie Reifler ‘21 built connections between food webs, population ecology, and biodiversity for Ms. Amy Dougan’s 7th grade science class at McDonough Middle School. See Joseph’s web portfolio for his lesson that drew parallels between population ecology and computer games that require users to manage scarce resources. See Allie’s web portfolio for her lesson that made biodiversity networks in the faraway Galapagos Islands more tangible by using yarn to “string” together students to represent interdependent relationships between different species.

Lexi Zanger ‘19, Julia Burdulis ‘21, and Todd Kawahara ‘22 invented geometry lessons for Mr. Adam Smith’s 6th grade math class at Environmental Science Magnet at Mary Hooker School. See Lexi’s web portfolio for her lesson on measuring surface area to “prank” Mr. Smith and cover his desk in wrapping paper. See Julia’s web portfolio for her lesson on calculating the area of triangles and parallelograms for students to create their own imaginary zoos. See Todd’s web portfolio for his lesson on estimating the volume of the Traveler’s Tower in downtown Hartford.

Anne Valbrune ‘21 and Jess Semblante ‘21 paired up to lead a series of math workshops for Ms. Kristen Crawford’s 4th grade class at the Expeditionary Learning Academy at Moylan School (ELAMS). See Anne’s web portfolio for her lesson on representing fractions and decimals in numerical and pictorial formats (which led students to debate whether 0.8 and 0.80 were the same or different). See Jess’s web portfolio for her lesson about acute/obtuse angles, shapes, and symmetry across three hands-on learning stations.

Rafael Villa ‘21 and Gisselle Hernandez ‘22 created math and science workshops for the JZ-Academic Mentoring Program with 8th grade students from Hartford Magnet Trinity College Academy, led by Beatrice Alicea. See Rafael’s web portfolio for their lesson about designing water rockets, which asked students to build different fins and nosecones to test how these variables affected the height reached by their rockets. See Gisselle’s web portfolio for their math and art lesson that taught concepts of rotation and translation to create tessellations.

Learn more about this Community Learning experience from the instructor’s perspective on Jack Dougherty’s personal site.