ALLEGANY, N.Y. — Susie Ciminesi admits that she has always had students who have had strong math skills, but struggled with reading.
That struggle is what drove the fifth-grade Allegany-Limestone Elementary School teacher to come up with a visual concept to help her students understand math problems by presenting them in comic form, instead of through written instructions.
An article written by Ciminesi that uses comic images to present math to children was recently picked up by the Edutopia online publication that reaches a wide range of students and school districts.
Founded by innovative and award-winning filmmaker George Lucas in 1991, the Edutopia foundation takes “a strategic approach to improving K-12 education through two distinct areas of focus: Edutopia and Lucas Education Research.”
Ciminisei said she wrote the article with a goal of using comics as a manner of presenting traditional word problems, while increasing student engagement and supporting struggling readers.
“I have always had students for whom math is a strength, but reading is a struggle,’ Cimensi explained. “Word problems can be especially frustrating for these students. Word problems also tend to be boring, unrelatable passages most students are not keen to read carefully.”
Ciminesi, who has taught for 17 years, five of which have been at Allegany-Limestone, said presenting word problems visually is something she has wanted to do for a while, but lacked the artistic skills to make a reality.
“It was not until this January after learning about Pixton, a subscription-based comic creation website, that I began making comic problems,” she shared. The website provided the ability for her to drag and drop premade backgrounds, as well as people and speech bubbles to create professional looking comics.
“The beauty of Pixton is it allows someone who is not artistic to create comics easily,” she commented.
Ciminesi said she has used the comic concept with her students since January and it appears to have helped them.
“Students seem to enjoy the word problems more as comics, and the format makes it easier to focus on the math because the information is chunked and illustrated,” she remarked. “I also try to include students as characters in situations related to their lives and interests.”
Ciminesi said she hopes the concept will help kids outside of her classroom.
“Comics and graphic novels are very popular with students right now and are already being used in schools across the country to teach and engage students in multiple content areas,” she explained, noting this includes language arts, history and science. “Bringing comics into the math classroom could impart similar benefits in terms of engagement and reading support. If so, textbook, program and standardized test publishers should take notice.”
Ciminesi said she was excited when Edutopia agreed to publish the article “because it meant the idea would be shared with more people.”
She plans to continue using comics to present math problems and is considering conducting “action research to better determine the impact of comic formatting on student problem-solving.”
On a personal note, Ciminesi said her husband is her teaching partner at school and they live in Olean. Before moving to Western New York, they lived and taught in Alaska.
Principal Meghan Janora said the school district is proud of Ciminesi and believes her work is successful as it “concentrates on using comics to make math content more engaging and accessible for students who struggle with wording of problems.”
May 08, 2021 at 07:00PM
https://www.bradfordera.com/news/learning-math-at-allegany-limestone-is-as-easy-as-reading-a-comic/article_57360c0b-b567-5e0d-94cb-54b5f868011a.html
Learning math at Allegany-Limestone is as easy as reading a comic! - Bradford Era
https://news.google.com/search?q=easy&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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