Math

Faces whitened with flour, aprons stained in smeared chocolate and hands sticky with sugar and egg, Amber Baur’s sixth-graders could have been mistaken for the school’s kitchen staff. Eastbluff Elementary’s School’s multipurpose room was converted into a small bakery for a couple of hours Wednesday when Baur’s class learned fractions in a different, but tasteful way. Baur’s students were using math to reduce recipes meant for several dozen down to enough for a class of 20. If the kids miscalculated, they wouldn’t see any red ink on paper.

UCI Chancellor Michael Drake will announce a multi-million dollar boost to the school?s California Teach Science and Math initiative today, school officials said. The award comes from the science and math initiative?s national body. The California Teach Science and Math Initiative helps prepare future math and science teachers and supports programs that have proven effective in math and science education in the country. The program, still in its infancy, aims to address the massive shortage of qualified math and science teachers in California.

UC Irvine researchers have received about $1 million to develop a training program that will help Compton Unified School District’s kindergarten through second-grade teachers improve math and science instruction. The California Postsecondary Education Commission’s grant will be used to design, oversee and measure the effectiveness of the university’s “Science and Math Impacting Learners of English” project this week. The project stretches over four years and trains 225 teachers in effective techniques on how to reach students learning English as a second language when they study math and science.

Paul Schmitt, founder and president of Create A Skate, came to Newport Heights Elementary School Thursday with a definite message to students: You will have to use math and science in the future. If you want to be a world-class skateboarder, that is. Schmitt, who lives in Newport Beach and operates his manufacturing company out of Costa Mesa, visited Newport Heights along with professional skateboarder Christian Hosoi to deliver board-making supplies to more than 100 students.

The Daily Pilot asked fifth-graders at Eastbluff Elementary School, "What was the most interesting thing you learned about the ancient world?" "My favorite thing that I learned is that the Egyptians were building pyramids at the same time the Chinese were making ice cream." Thomas Sweeney, 11 "I was really fascinated about what the Greeks did. I didn't know they invented comedy and tragedy." Kylie Mulvaney, 12 "That Nero burned down half of Rome to make his palace."

This is the last in a five-part series on how the local school district is dealing with the No Child Left Behind Act. EDITOR'S NOTE: Ibrahim Muradian recently found himself in an odd position for a high school math instructor: explaining how to add two numbers together. The special-needs student he was tutoring had nearly finished a sophisticated problem but stumbled on the final step, which Ibrahim thought would be the easiest. Out came the pencils and blank paper, and the two of them reviewed the most basic part of math.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first in a five-part series on how the local school district is dealing with the No Child Left Behind Act. Sometimes Amalia Castañon asks her students to write about their dreams. A few want to grow rich, or be doctors and lawyers, or work in law enforcement. Castañon has a dream for her students as well. In May, they will begin taking standardized tests in English, and she hopes that through writing practice, they will develop the skills needed to pass.

In Leslie Montejano's class at Newport Coast Elementary School, students are combining one of the newest art forms in the world with one of the oldest. Recently, Montejano received a grant from the California Technology Assistance Project to provide her entire class with iPods — handheld devices that play music or movies — and she cooked up a complex assignment to go with them. Last week, her students created songs about multiplication problems, set them to the tune of classic nursery rhymes and filmed themselves singing on digital cameras.

The Newport-Mesa Unified School District posted overall gains on its standardized tests this year. English scores rose at nearly every grade level, although math scores dipped from a year ago. The state released the results Tuesday for this year's Standardized Testing and Reporting program, which compiles scores from a number of tests. Newport-Mesa surpassed the state average in most categories and saw a number of its schools improve across the board. Every class in Newport-Mesa boosted its English scores during 2005-06 except for the seventh grade, which fell by one percentage point, and the 11th, which stayed the same.