Fisk math students among best in state

POPLAR BLUFF, Mo. -- Just how fast did those Iditarod teams mush? Linda Null's math students know. Every day during the event, they went online to check the sledders racing toward Nome. They used statistics from the Web site to figure how fast the teams were going. They checked temperatures from Alaska and graphed the highs and lows. They researched and added up the costs of maintaining a dogsled team.

Math isn't just pencils and word problems anymore. In fact, relating problem-solving skills to real-life situations helps keep classroom number-crunching interesting these days.

"We try to make it fun," said Null, who teaches seventh and eighth grade math at the Twin Rivers Middle School in Fisk.

And the math teachers at Fisk must be doing something right. The school recently received a nod from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, after its eighth graders consistently performed well on the math section of the Missouri Assessment Program Test.

Making the Top 10

The percentage of Fisk eighth graders scoring proficient or above in MAP math testing over the last four years is 19.08 percent; the statewide average is 13 percent, according to DESE. Their performance makes Fisk one of the state's top 10 in math scores among the 191 schools with enrollments of 250 to 500.

DESE is using the "Top 10 list" to recognize schools for sustained MAP test performance, and to study "what is being done to put those buildings on top and share that information with other schools," according to a DESE letter sent to Fisk principal Joyce Williams last week.

"We've been recognized as maintaining high scores over the four years the test has been given," Williams said. "Frankly, I think it's good teachers. They have taken to heart the performance-based teaching of math ... . I was in a class one time when they were figuring out the cost of building a house. They use a lot of different skills, too - it's not just 3 times 2 anymore."

Because of the scores, Null and Lesa Murray, Fisk fifth and sixth grade math teacher, made a presentation on the school's math program at the Show-Me Curriculum Administrator's Association workshop in Cape Girardeau Thursday.

Null also coaches the school's math club, meeting with them weekly, practicing and going to competitions. Recently in Poplar Bluff, three of her students qualified to compete at the state level in the Missouri Council of Teachers of Mathematics contest, she said.

Null, too, has earned some recognition: she is one of the Missouri finalists for the Presidential Award for Excellence in secondary mathematics teaching, she said. The winner has not yet been announced.

And what will her students do now that the Iditarod mushers and dogs have rolled into Nome? Pi, of course. And circles - lots of circles.

The week of March 14 - that's 3-14 - will be used to study the number pi, 3.14, which denotes the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter.

"We just try to keep things interesting and make it fun," Null said.