Alabama Math, Science and Technology Initiative hits area middle school

By Jim Cook

Published: June 27, 2008

Honeysuckle Middle School teachers are gearing up to give students a more hands-on experience in learning math and science.

Honeysuckle will become an Alabama Math Science and Technology Initiative School this fall. AMSTI is an initiative to improve math and science instruction by using research-based methods.

For the past two weeks, Honeysuckle teachers have participated in a training institute that showed them how to put AMSTI into practice. AMSTI teaching practices include a heavy emphasis on activity-based instruction.

“We did an experiment with termites where we took different colored ink pens and used them to determine what color pen they were drawn to,” said Scott Faulk, Honeysuckle assistant principal.

Faulk said the activity-based learning exercises were more likely to keep students interested and involved in math and science learning.

“It basically makes the classroom more interactive,” he said.

According to Patsy Slaughter, Honeysuckle principal, students often enter middle school with a deficit in math and science learning because of earlier grades’ heavy emphasis on reading skills mastery. Slaughter said she thinks the program will help correct this problem and be a major selling point for her school.

“We’re really going to push math and science,” she said.

The program provides teachers with equipment like labware, chemicals, global positioning devices, plants with growth containers, etc. Once the kits are used, they are returned to a materials center where they are restocked and then returned to the school. A support center administered by Troy University will also help teachers use AMSTI principles.

According to results provided by the initiative’s external evaluator, students in AMSTI schools score significantly better on SAT math, science and reading tests and the Alabama High School Graduation Exam than students in non-AMSTI schools.

The program is modeled after the Alabama Reading Initiative, which has been credited with improving reading scores and narrowing achievement gaps between disadvantaged demographic groups and their more affluent counterparts.