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The Herald, Tuesday, October 23, 1977 Page ?

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TERRACE-KITIMAT

daily

herald

. SECOND

SECTION

Student

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teacher Tim Dyer gi

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Josiane Cam and Lesile Rozsas discuss the price

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of Rycriap.

IN THE MARKET PLACE

clons. |

Students learn metric

‘By DON SCHAFFER
Herakl Staff Writer
Shoppers in the
Overwaitea store in
Terrace watched in-

credulously as a grou at

grade 7 students

carts up and dewn the
alsles, argued about best
buys and frantically
calculated prices Friday
afternoon.

The trip was organized
by Bob Middleton, a
grade 7 teacher at
Thornhill Elementary
School, and two student
teachers, Tim Dyer and
Ramona Langton, as the

touch of a unit
on metric weights and
Mthe trip
c] was stipe
vised by Middleton, Dyer,
Langton and Christine
Eide, the student
teachers’ supervisor on
the Simbn Fraser
University’s teacher-
training program.

Middleton - explained
that the trip was done at
the end of the metrics
unit, not so much as a test
of the student's ability to
make calculations based
on the weights and
volumes of the products,
but as a way of getting
the children some
practical experience in
the marketplace.

“We wanted to make
the material we have
been covering
meaningful to the
students, to show them
what a kilogram weighs
and how much a litre is,”
Middleton said.
"Hopefully they will
understand the
relationships between the
volumes and weights
better than they would
have had they just done

r-

the classroom work.”

They certainly found
cut how heavy three iltres
of cooking oil was. Two
girls were passing the
botile around amazed at
its weight.

The students were not
simply turned loose in the
store. They were split up
into groups of three or
four and given question
sheets, with problems of
conversions and com-
parisons between smaller
and larger products.
They were asked which is
abetter buy, brand X ata
certain weight or brand Y
ata different weight, and
similar questions.

“Some of those
questions are really
tough," Dyer explained.
“They aren’t simply
being asked to do the
math, they also have to
make judgements based
on the information they
get from doing the
questions correctly.”

Besides the school-
work aspect, the children
learned something about
how the marketplace
works, They discovered,
for instance, that a

potentially have been a

disastrous field trip, with
the students released at
random in a super-

‘market. The class was

well
‘working all the time, with

grocery store is divided:

into sections, where
products of similar uses
are put together. They
also learned that the
atore makes It easier for
them to pick which
products they want by
placing signs underneath
or over top of mer-
chandise in order to
explain its cost, or if it is
on special.

It also showed the
student teachers
something about the way
students will act if given
direction and structured
assignment in what could

behaven and
a minimum of fooling
around, .
Part of this success
came from theimarking
arrangement. Half of the
marks were on how well
the calculations were
performed, the other half
on the group’s behavior. -
Individual students who
may have played around
were held in line by other
group members who
didn’t want to lose marks
because of someone else,
In this, they learned
about the value of
teamwork in ae:
complishing a set task.
As far as_ the
Measurable results, the
scores on the assignment,
were concerned, the trip
wags very successful. One
team got a perfect score
on the questionnaire, and
on the bonus question.
The groups were
behaved and very in-
terested in what they
were doing, (o the. point
that it was very hard to
distract most of them.
The students also came
away from the trip more

cost-conscious con-
sumers. They were
amazed to find that the
small jars of Cheez-whiz
were less expensive per
weight than the large
jars, and several ex-
pressed dismay that the
large economy size
wasn't a better buy after
- They learned = to
calculate the cost of the
products they looked at,
but Middleton admitted
that the assumption of the
“better buy” was based
on totally on cost, not
taking into account
quality of the items ob-
served.

Eide was impressed
with the way the students
learned, and with the way
that her students handled
the class. She expressed
satisfaction with the
organization and
execution of the trip, and
was very pleased with the
idea behind it.

“It really does make
the classwork more
meaningful for the
students if they can be
shown that it is useful,”
she said. “It's also good if
the students can get away
from the classroom every
once in a while to par-
ticipate in something
worthwhile.”'

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