The discovery that math can be fun spread to more Polk County elementary students on Friday, Mar. 6, as students from Saluda Elementary and Tryon Elementary took part in the district’s second Math Festival of the year.
Third- through fifth-grade students from both schools gathered in Tryon Elementary’s gymnasium for hands-on activities featuring logic puzzles and mathematical reasoning. Polk County High School students from Caitlin Williams’ Math 3 Honors and AP Calculus classes and Polly Kennedy’s AP Statistics class volunteered to run activity stations.
Williams organized the festival in collaboration with Andrea Walter, AIG specialist at Polk Central, Tryon and Sunny View elementary schools.
The activities, provided by Julia Robinson Math Festival, included Jumping Julia, Bridges, Shapes Maze and Corners. The puzzles engaged students with challenges involving logic, problem-solving and mathematical reasoning in interactive, game-like formats.
The Math Festival initiative grew out of the district’s summer Math Camp, where teachers worked with a Julia Robinson Math Festival presenter who demonstrated how to run engaging math activities for students. Following the successful first festival in November at Polk Central Elementary, which served Polk Central and Sunny View students, the district expanded the program to serve Saluda and Tryon students.
The cross-grade collaboration allowed high school students to serve as math mentors while elementary students experienced mathematics as collaborative and engaging rather than purely computational.
