Get a jump on learning
Olive Branch frog-leap competition gives legs to students’ math lessons
It was part math and part science but all fun as Pleasant Hill Elementary’s third-graders gathered in their school’s rotunda for a frogjumping championship Friday. Six frogs representing the six third-grade classes were chosen for Friday’s race after winning heats on Thursday in which about 100 frogs competed.
Todd Willis, third-grade math science and social studies teacher, said the event was used to teach students about bar graphs, rounding numbers and place value, standards for third-grade math under the new Common Core curriculum. Willis said the races also taught the children about the environment.
“In my classroom it’s really important to teach kids about nature. In books they see pictures of frogs or birds from Africa while not appreciating what we have here. Imagine if someone from Africa saw a cardinal for the first time,” he said.
Willis decided to hold the races after he asked a few students to catch frogs for a classroom tank. So many students got excited about the proposition that Willis decided to make a grade-wide activity of it, stressing math.
The frogs lined up not in first, second and third lanes but lanes labeled ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, ten thousands, hundred thousands. Bar graphs were made and finishes were compared to pare down the mass of frogs to the finalists.
“There were parents that spent three or four hours with their kids in the evening catching frogs and trying to find one that would be a winner. It was great family time. I had one parent tell me that their child had never been so excited to go to school,” Willis said.
The finalists were Marlee Grimmett with Dusty, Kyra Mitchell with Sadie, Cayleb Newell with Rocket, Jarrett Morris with Spike, Riley Rayburn with Jumping Jack and Cooper Dye with Speeding Green.
Cayleb said his older brother helped him catch Rocket, but it took a while. “It took three days because we would catch them and they kept jumping out of the basket. Then we finally got a lid for it,” Cayleb said.
Kyra — who raced Sadie, brought in by Janna Moorhead — said the hardest thing was keeping Sadie in lane. Participants were allowed to pick up their frogs up and put them back in their proper lane as long as they didn’t move them into a more forward position.
“I expected frogs to be slimy,” Kyra said. “They aren’t slimy at all. I learned they do what they want to do too.”
That was something principal Jamie Loper learned well when racing for third-grade teacher Debra Gray in the justfor-fun teacher’s race. Three inches from the finish line, her frog stubbornly refused to move despite her prompting. Willis’ frog won the race over those raced by Loper and the other third-grade teachers, Sammi Campbell, Carol Smith, Jennifer Smith and Megan Stotts.
Through the unit, the thirdgraders learned about what frogs eat and how to take care of them. Willis purchased a bunch of crickets to make sure the frogs wouldn’t be hungry while at school. And in line with what he found out about frog jumping contests elsewhere, the frogs will be released back into the areas where they were caught.