Harding Hosts 6th Grade Math In Business Symposium
Sixth graders at Harding Middle School recently completed a six-week project-based learning experience that was capped off with an incredible Math in Business Symposium on October 14 The symposium, which included speeches from Mayor George and Superintendent Niedzwiecki, highlighted the end product of students’ work learning about how local business owners use math to help make their businesses successful.
While the focus was on math, the project was truly multidisciplinary, reaching across math and language arts as the students used many of our Vision of a Lakewood Graduate competencies including creativity, communication, collaboration, growth mindset and critical thinking. Working in teams, the students were required to reach out via email to a Lakewood business owner asking to interview them about how math is used in their business.
More than 50 Lakewood businesses welcomed the students for interviews, which the students recorded and are now included in a podcast that can be listened to on Spotify. Each team then worked on creating an infographic outlining the ways that math is a part of the success strategy of the business they profiled. They asked about math tools, math models and math calculations, among other concepts. What they learned, they compiled into amazing infographics, designed by the students and displayed at the symposium.
The pride and the excitement over their products filled the air at the symposium as students shared their work with parents and teachers.
“I liked getting to go out on our own,” said sixth-grader Pip Speck. “We had fun learning about a new business.”
Kudos to the sixth-grade teachers who brought this amazing project to our students: Stephen Kerney, Lisa Batkiewicz, Teresa Rhinehalt, Mindy Bruening and Amanda Kennedy, with support from teaching and learning coordinator Casey Squires.