Ralston Students Ponder the Power of the Triangle

The term “gallery walk" in the traditional sense suggests a stroll through a museum or artist’s loft to view paintings, drawings, photos or sculptures. But the "gallery" space in the long hallways of Ralston Middle School had an interesting installation of its own earlier this month---a math project, which, some could argue was work of art itself.

For three days, students in all grades displayed their work derived from POM, or Problem of the Month, an instructional math strategy designed to help students prepare for MARS testing in March.

The key to POM explained Linda McDaniel, Ralston’s Director of 21^st Century Learning, is directly linked to the type of learning focus for the district’s transition to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). McDaniel explained that Ralston’s math coach Tracy Sola was instrumental in providing support to the math department for POM, and math department teachers under the leadership of Wendy Lyn and Albert Duncalf spent the month of January focused on this instructional strategy to help prepare the students for the MARS in March.

In teams of two, students worked on a common Problem of the Month—in this case, the problem was a triangle. Students are assigned varying levels of the problem based on their math level---levels range from A to E, with A being the easiest.

The posters fill the hallways and during the Gallery Walk the students will need to answer assessment questions.  

On posters that lined the school’s hallways, students showed their collaborative work and answered assessment questions describing everything from how they made sense of the problem and patterns found in each section, to how they solved the problem.

One of the project’s goals explained McDaniel is to show students that math is more than just computation, and that they can apply the tools learned in POM to solve problems in everyday life.

Did your student participate in POM? Tell us about their experience in the comments below.

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