Reading, writing, arithmetic and pumpkin bars

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

For generations, young students trying to learn fractions, decimals and other forms of higher math have asked, “How am I going to use this later in life?”

One answer might be, “Someday you might make pumpkin bars.”

The traditional Thanksgiving dessert became a lesson in real-life arithmetic Monday at Charles City Middle School, as 5th-grade students in Elizabeth Platte’s and Jennifer Seehusen’s classes made and frosted enough pumpkin bars for all in the middle school to sample.

“I watched an amazing pumpkin bar lab today in fifth grade,” said Charles City Superintendent Mike Fisher, who — when he heard there would be fresh baked goods — apparently couldn’t resist stopping by for a taste. “They baked pumpkin bars, and it was in stations, and it was all about math and fractions.”

Measuring ingredients for a recipe is a math lesson that nearly everyone will apply later in life, and Fisher said such classes are all about the district’s mission to increase student engagement.

“With math, sometimes it’s hard to show kids how it is used in context, so it was great for those kids to apply math skills in that way,” Fisher said at the school board meeting on Monday. Board vice-president Missy Freund added that her daughter was in the class, and was very excited to go to school that morning.

“When you look at the students and how engaged they are — and the smile factor — they took math, and they actually applied it,” Fisher said. “I was really impressed with that.”

Fisher mentioned other related student-engagement class activities include an 8th-grade social studies class that’s taking wooden slats and making a plat map — a guide to tracts of surveyed land — of the county.

“Each group of students is responsible for a different township in Floyd County,” Fisher said. “How neat is that?”

Fisher mentioned another class at the middle school, which is building a simulated city.