• <p> Let the carving begin!</p>
  • <p>How many seeds in this pumpkin? About 500-ish.</p>
  • <p>Ewww! Lots of orange goop.</p>
  • <p>This group counted seeds in groups of 100.</p>
  • <p>This group counted seeds in groups of 20.</p>
  • <p>RMS Math Teacher Emily Lloyd getting into the counting action.</p>
  • <p>In Lisa Rios’ language arts classroom, students participated in Quizlet Live to build on their Halloween vocabulary. RMS sixth-graders will now be referring to ghosts as “apparitions.”</p>
  • <p>Students read a “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” readers’ theater script in the RMS LRC to work on vocabularly, voice inflection, comprehension, and reading confidence.</p>
  • <p>Health/Family & Consumer Science Teacher Laura Abraham (left) helped carve pumpkins in Jody Stoneberg’s (right) science class.</p>

November 1, 2018

Making Learning Fun with Pumpkins

Sixth-graders at Rotolo Middle School worked in teams on Oct. 31 to carve a pumpkin—all in the name of math and science.

While carving, students worked together to answer interesting pumpkin science and math questions …

What is the circumference and weight of your pumpkin?
How many creases does your pumpkin have?
Do all pumpkins have an odd or even number of creases?
What is the weight of your pumpkin?
Do the raised ridges on the stem correspond to anything on the pumpkin?
How many seeds does your pumpkin have?
Do pumpkins with more creases have more seeds?

And so on.

For the record, students were guessing around 200 seeds per medium-sized pumpkin, but after sorting through the orange goop, turns out there are about 500-plus seeds in a pumpkin. When students finished with their research, they graphed their findings.

Students in Team 6-2 worked in stations and, after carving, transitioned to their language arts classroom to work on Halloween Mad Libs and Quizlet Live and then moved to the LRC to read a “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” readers’ theater script with vocabulary words from Quizlet Live.

Special thanks to Trader Joe’s Batavia and Abbey Farms for donating pumpkins to RMS for the sixth-grade pumpkin project!