Students Count On Fun in Courses With Hands-On Approach to Math : Education: Teaching project has junior high students learning algebra, geometry by making hot air balloons, flying kites at Southwestern College.

Kelly San Martin, a 14-year-old honors student from Bonita, completed five weeks of mathematics classes at Southwestern College on Thursday, but she doesn’t have a single test score or homework paper to show for it.

She took two classes a day, five days a week, and didn’t crack a book the whole time.

“For the first couple of weeks I was afraid to tell my dad what we were doing,” Kelly said. “He kept saying, ‘So when are you going to get books?’ and I didn’t know how to tell him we didn’t have books. He even called the school to make sure there really was a class because he complained I never brought homework sheets.”

“And then one day, it slipped out. He asked me what I was going to do in class that day, and I said, ‘We’re going to make kites and fly them.’ And he said, ‘What?!’ ”

Kelly and about 130 other junior high school students who participated in a new teaching project at Southwestern College learned math by flying kites, making gumdrop mobiles and constructing hot air balloons by using a hands-on approach educators say will eventually replace the traditional book and memorization method from which most students now learn math.

The federally funded $150,000 project gave 25 math teachers a chance to learn how to teach in “a more exciting and fun way” that emphasizes reasoning over recitation, said Melanie Branca, the program’s director.

Traditionally, students are geared toward memorizing formulas and tables and learning computational skills rather than learning problem-solving skills and real-world applications, Branca said. Most of the junior high school students who were used as guinea pigs in the program also had been taught math by books, Branca said.

The program was unusual because teachers were able to work with the children in a “laboratory-type setting” so they could see how students reacted to learning math from a more hands-on approach, Branca said.

Students voluntarily participated in the program, which was offered free, “but I have to admit that not all of them are here because they’re dying to get into it,” Branca said, adding that some parents had forced their children to come. About 140 students, from the math-illiterate to honors level, were enrolled when the program began June 24, and about 130 students finished it, Branca said.

Most of the students were from South Bay or Southeast San Diego. Junior high school students were targeted because studies show that most students lose interest in math then, Branca said.

“It’s not like regular math, like from a book,” Kelly said. “You have to apply it to different things. Making a kite is related to algebra.”

“It was fun, not like regular school,” said Marquise Laster, a 13-year-old who showed off a multicolored hot air balloon he helped make. When the balloon was launched, Marquise had to measure the angle degree of its height.

Students also made mobiles from gumdrops so they could learn solid geometry, said Carol Giesing, a teacher from Gompers Secondary School who participated in the program.

Giesing, who has been teaching for 16 years, said she learned new ways of making math fun and exciting to students.

Because of technological advances, students today need to know how to reason more than how to calculate, she said. “The kids today don’t need to know the same kind of math that we did,” Giesing said. “They have calculators and computers that they can turn to, and we need to teach them how to solve problems.”

“Most of the students liked learning a different way of looking at math,” said Athalean Gee, who teaches at Hilltop Junior High School. “They learned how to apply math to real-life situations. We need to get away from book learning.”

Not all students are ready to throw away their textbooks, however.

“It was a real disappointment,” said 14-year-old Guerin Payne. “I was expecting a lot more algebra and trigonometry. I came here to get an edge on math for next year, and then it was like, ‘What the hell is this?’ . . . I prefer books because it seems like it’s more professional.”

Pointing at his hot air balloon, Guerin added, “My dad thinks I’ve been transferred to a lower class.”

When the program is repeated next summer, Branca said she will add a parent activity day because most parents do not understand the program. “I get these calls from parents saying, ‘My daughter is coming home, and she’s playing with blocks, and she’s in the seventh grade,’ ” Branca said.

The hands-on approach to learning was spotlighted and pushed by educators in the mid-1980s, said Tony Spear, mathematics coordinator for the San Diego County Office of Education. California has been one of the leaders in promoting this method, according to Spear.

About 20% of high school teachers in county schools teach in such a manner, and about 60% of junior high school teachers use it, Spear said. He predicted that, in about 20 years, the traditional book learning method will be replaced by the hands-on approach. Added Spear, “This is not a flash in the pan.”