Saint James the Apostle School

O.R.E.O. Challenge 2008

Math took an enjoyable and delicious turn for our students in Mrs. Bocchino and Miss Ambrosino’s classes who participated in the 2008 O.R.E.O. Challenge. First the children predicted how many cookies they could stack, one at a time, before they tumbled. This led to a discussion about what exactly a tumble is and what it looks like. A tumble is when three or more cookies fall from a tower. It was stressed that the cookie towers could not be supported by anything. The towers had to be free standing. Once a cookie was placed on the tower and the student’s hand released the cookie, no adjustment could be made. Each student predicted the number of cookies they thought they could stack. The classes talked about how the word “prediction” is a math term that means about the same as the science word “hypothesis”. After all predictions were made and recorded, the students began stacking. The children worked in teams of two. While one stacked, the other tallied. The students were taught to tally five cookies at a time using four marks with the fifth slash across. This led to a discussion of how to tally and also counting by groups of five. After everyone had a turn stacking it was time to use the data to check predictions. One at a time the students announced how many Oreo cookies they actually stacked. Estimating and stacking were lots of fun. Perhaps the best part of the morning was eating the Oreo cookies when the challenge was finished. This project was an individual challenge that involved teamwork to record and collect the data. Some of the vocabulary words and concepts used or learned during the O.R.E.O Challenge included the following:

*math – predicting, averaging, tallying, adding, comparing, estimating

*science – hypothesis, experiment, data collection, verifying results, balance, stability

*language arts – cause and effect, sequencing, the writing traits and organizing

Valerie Crocco, Principal