To raise money to help other children, Antonio Morales spent an afternoon picking up aluminum cans at a local park. He also collected a bunch of cans from friends.
"I brought in over 100 cans," he said.
Antonio, 9, is one of 16 students in Kristen Preston's third-grade class at North Hills Elementary School who have been collecting cans and plastic bottles since the beginning of October as a way to sharpen math skills while helping others.
Each morning, several students have gone to classrooms to collect whatever contributions other students and teachers in the school are making. When they return to their classroom, they report to their classmates about how many items they gathered in each classroom. They then count out the cans in groups of 10, put them in a plastic bag, take 10 groups of 10 to make 100, and put all of those in a larger bag. Once that's done, they update their total on a large chart in the hallway.
On Wednesday, the final day of the project, the team of Antonio, Fredrick Crump and Ariana Guerrero did the math and changed the total to 927 cans. Additional contributions brought the total to more than 1,000.
The project grew from the goal of helping students learn about place values in math -- ones, 10s, 100s, 1,000s. Thinking that a hands-on project would help everything register, Preston decided that collecting plastic bottles and aluminum cans would work well.
Principal Karen Morning-Cain thought that it was a great idea. "It's making connections for our kids to truly understand place value," she said.
After being counted, the plastic bottles are recycled.
Selling the cans offered a way make a little money. In 1980, it took about 25 aluminum cans to make a pound. These days, it's about 331/2 to a pound, which brings in about 25 cents around here. That means the class will get about $8 for its hard work.
Preston invited her students to explore the options of what to do with whatever money they raised.
"Let's make a list of things that you want to do with the money," she said.
After they added a class pet and a field trip to their list of possibilities, she asked, "What about thinking of things to help the community?"
Preston knew that Joanie Blair, a first-grade teacher's assistant at North Hills, was collecting aluminum cans and donating the proceeds to Family Services' shelter for battered women.
When the students learned that it helped other children, they thought that it would be the perfect project.
Blair was delighted to help. "It's not about the money," she said. It's about learning that, no matter what your circumstances are, you can reach out to help others.
"The kids feel good about it," Blair said.
They do.
"I feel happy because I am helping other people," Ariana said.
Today, the students -- along with all the other students in the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County school system -- are out of school. When they return next week, they will start on their next project to help others -- collecting canned goods for Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina.
"I'm proud of them," Preston said. "They have learned to think beyond themselves."
kunderwood@wsjournal.com
727-7389
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement