The Week in Rap Shout-Out Contest: Barrington Middle School-Prairie Campus!

Each week, we offer the chance for students to win a shout-out for their school by completing a critical thinking challenge through our Week in Rap Shout-Out Contest. Friday’s winning entry came from Mr. Boscarino’s 7th grade science class at Barrington Middle School-Prairie Campus in Barrington, IL – and it had a little something to do with pizza. Read on!

Last week, after covering a story about how video games may develop key parts of the brain, we asked students to design their own educational game to teach an academic subject or skill.

A favorite from Mr. Boscarino’s class was a game that used pizza making to help students learn division, multiplication, and inequalities. As master pizza makers, players of the game get orders of different size pizzas with an array of toppings. Here’s an example of how the game works according to the student:

“The customer orders a large pizza (12 slices) with 24 mushrooms and 36 olives. As the student, I would divide 24 by 12 to get two and then 36 divided by 12 to get three. This shows that there should be 2 mushrooms per slice and 3 olives per slice. To double check their work, a student might want to multiply (12 times 2 equals 24).”

The student added in additional layers of complexity as the player moves up levels within the game. For example, at level 3, the game starts to give the player two orders with a prompt to write an inequality about the toppings, slices, or number of pizzas the customers ordered.

We loved that this idea offered a great way to practice math skills while playing with pizza – because who doesn’t love pizza? Amazing job, Barrington Middle School-Prairie Campus.

Does your school want a shout-out? Find out about the next Week in Rap Shout-Out Contest challenge!