Pricing Project Reaffirms Math Skills, Collaboration for Students

A group of Hodgenville Elementary School students are getting a hands-on look at math the same way many adults use math daily: through finances.

Lacy Hatfield’s students are currently putting their math, research and collaboration skills to use to upgrade the School Hawk Cart. The School Hawk Cart is an incentive cart students can pick prizes from as rewards for good behavior, grades, and more.

“Students researched items and surveyed all grades. They worked as a group to determine how they would survey the kids based on age and other factors,” Hatfield said “They practiced rounding, adding, subtracting, and multiplying numbers. They also constructed a letter and video that was posted on social media.”

For Hatfield’s students, this project is about more than math skills. They’re engaging with peers, working on explaining their needs, and collaborating with each other every step of the way.

Projects like these serve a larger purpose for the district. These Vibrant Learning projects are part of the district’s Profile of a Learner initiative. The Profile of a Learner aims to help students in the district feel confident in applying their education once they graduate from LaRue County High School.

Hatfield said that this project keeps students involved and thus, helps keep math relevant rather than relegated to a specific classroom setting.

“The students have ownership of the project and ask to work on it daily,” she said. “I feel like they will remember this and will see the reason why it is important that they know how to perform a certain math skill.”

Her classroom is seeing the fruits of their labor. Hatfield noted that items for the cart and donations are coming in, but there’s still progress to be made.

“Our goal is to have this up and going by spring. We still have some work to do: pricing, interviewing teachers, and organizing,” she said.