COPPERAS COVE, TX — Pizza Hut is stepping in to help Copperas Cove students learn while they're away from school.
Hettie Halstead Elementary third grader Malakay Drayton chose his ingredients carefully and then, with exact precision, placed them on to his pizza. But, this is one pizza he won’t be eating. It’s actually a lesson in fractions.
With the closure of schools across Copperas Cove ISD due to COVID-19, each student received a personal pan pizza box courtesy of Pizza Hut along with a worksheet with a pizza pie printed on it to reinforce his knowledge of fractions.
Each student created his favorite pizza pie and then cut the pizza into slices to represent fractions.
Drayton said he enjoyed decorating his pizzas the way he likes to eat them.
“Pepperoni pizza is my favorite, but I also created a cereal pizza,” Drayton said, adding that the lesson was fun and enjoyable. “I learned that I cannot have a numerator that is greater than the denominator to make one whole pizza.”
This in-home activity allows students to meet several Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for third graders.
Students are expected to be able to represent fractions greater than zero and less than or equal to one using concrete object or pictorial models such as the pizza.
The Pizza Hut personal pan pizza boxes helped students apply what they learned to real-world examples.
Third grade teacher Christina Newberry said students use their pizza fraction game to help them compare fractions in their distance learning packets that they are working on at home. Hands-on educational aids such as this one is just another example of quality instruction being provided even though lessons are being taught remotely.
“We spent time covering this standard with fraction strips and pictorial models. This activity was a great way to reinforce what the students had been learning,” Newberry said. “They were able to be creative, but have a fun way to have a visual connection to this concept. In the end, they had a product that they could practice at home that didn't involve pencil or paper. This was a great way to reach multiple modalities.”