3rd-graders' math skills are in the cards

By Cathy Grimes
Walla Walla Union-Bulletin

	GREG LEHMAN / AP Megan Nelson, 9, averts her eyes from her friend Becky Gonzales' cards, which had been inadvertently turned toward her during a classroom cribbage game. With the help of some volunteer adult coaches, their class took up the card game as a way to work on mental math skills. If cribbage spreads to other classes, the school may hold a tournament.
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BURBANK, Walla Walla County — On Fridays, the riffle and slap of cards shuffled and played punctuates the chatter in Wanda Parks' third-grade math class.

Students sit around desks pushed together to form tables, holding cards like seasoned poker players, eyes occasionally darting to a board dotted with multicolored pegs in the center of the table.

An adult at each table offers hints and encouragement as the students shout out numbers and occasional cries of triumph.

Parks presides over the buzz with a smile. What looks like animated play is active learning, she explains.

Her Columbia Elementary School students are honing their addition skills by learning to play cribbage.

By third grade, students are adept at solving math problems on paper and explaining their work, she explained.

Texts and hands-on activities aligned with state standards emphasize such skills, which students must demonstrate on state performance-based assessments.

But Parks said her third-graders stumbled when asked to add sums without paper and pencil. To shore up their mental math skills, Parks turned to an old card game: cribbage.

"It's an excellent way to learn simple math skills. This fills the gap. They're having so much fun and are so intent on the fun," she said, watching the animated play. "Eventually they realize they're learning."

She placed a notice in the Columbia School District newsletter asking for adult volunteers to work with students each Friday in January.

Enough parents and community members responded to provide an adult coach for each group of three students.

For student Courtney Nelson, the game was a revelation. Courtney said she often plays card games at home, but on a computer. Before learning to play cribbage in Parks' class, she had never held a hand of cards or shuffled a deck.

"It's a lot easier on the computer because you use the keyboard," she said, eyeing her cards as a classmate plops down a face card. "Cards are harder because you have to play with them."

She said she prefers the card game to textbooks "because it's more fun."

Megan Nelson said she wasn't sure about cribbage at first because it was a grown-up game and had the potential to be boring. After a few hands, she changed her mind.

"When I play with friends, it's fun," she said. "I've learned how to make 15 (a target score) in lots of different ways."

Columbia principal Lori Butler was among the adult coaches, though she said she had little experience with the game.

"It's an authentic way of applying math," she said as she watched her group add scores and march pegs down the board. "It is certainly keeping their skills of addition in practice."

High-school principal Kyle Miller, a former math teacher whose son Konnor is one of Parks' students, coached a gleeful group through their first games.

"It's constant math. They lay down cards and have to add to the running total," Kyle Miller said.

"It's definitely math," Sean Morris said sagely, slapping a five onto the growing pile of cards.

"It's better than flash cards," third-grader Trenton Nilsson noted.

Parks said other third-grade teachers are interested in teaching their students the game.

If other classes learn it, the school may hold a tournament later in the year.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company