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Leal Elementary School Class Learns “Illini Math”
Students in Terese Allender’s second-grade class at Leal Elementary School combined their love for the Fighting Illini basketball team with math lessons Friday as the students watched the Illinois-Wisconsin Big 10 Tournament game while learning math lessons.
All year long the students in Allender’s class practiced “Illini Math” where they took the scores and statistics of the Illini basketball games and worked out math lessons and problems. “We take the points scored and do lots of math problems with it,” Allender explains. The class watched the first half of the game and kept a tally of the Illini individual scorers and then solved math problems. Allender’s students were decked out in orange and blue and cheered on the Illini.
Allender adds that it is important for her students to blend learning with fun activities. She comments, “I think in order for kids to be lifelong learners we have to be able to connect what they’re doing in school with what they’re doing outside of school. This has created an interest that is a local interest to kids and it (uses) math that we would have never ever done before using all kinds of strategies, and that’s the thing that’s been fun; the kids now are being able to work with different strategies in solving problems.”
Photo: Leal Elementary School students watch Illini Basketball while doing math lessons.