Joyce Drake Alternative Middle School Students Prep for AIMS in the Park

TUCSON – May 19, 2008 – It may have appeared to be just a day at the park for Joyce Drake's Alternative Middle School students on April 4, but along with the fun, serious business was taking place.

To prepare for the Arizona Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS) test, Karan Stewart and Suzy Thomas brought 28 students to Reid Park, allowing them to participate in activities honing both their math and writing skills.

Recent AIMS test performance by Joyce Drake Alternative Middle School students indicate that preparation techniques like preparing at Reid Park are working.  During the three years the students have prepared for AIMS at Reid Park, the percentage of students passing sections of the exam have steadily increased. 

In 2007, a quarter of the Joyce Drake students passed the math section, a 15-percent increase from 2005.  During that same period, seven-percent more students passed the reading section (17-percent in 2007 compared to 10-percent in 2005) and half of the students passed the writing portion, a nine-percent increase from 2005.

Clearly, Joyce Drake students are experiencing more than just fun in the sun!

This year student groups featuring four to six members each had to complete creative tasks. In a story-writing exercise, students chased Frisbees featuring a word taped onto each surface. Once the Frisbees were retrieved, group members wrote a headline from the words, then supporting sentences to form a story.

In one group, the words “teen, suspect, crooked, smashes and singer” were retrieved. The students used the words to write “Teen suspect crashes crooked singer.” They told the story of a teen who was framed for something, but proved his innocence at the end.

In other groups, students wrote poems or rap verses about each of their classmates; worked on math concepts such as mean, median and mode; and honed their geometry skills. The groups visited each of the five stations for about 20 minutes each.

The most unusual activity may have been the pie-eating contest, where students devoured chocolate cream pie while their hands were tied behind their backs. It was all geared toward finding the numbers at the bottom of the pie, which, of course, were pi=3.l4.

To make the most of the day in the park, Joyce Drake teachers checked last year’s AIMS scores, pairing them with the AIMS standards this year to determine the areas they wanted to improve. They decided to emphasize geometry, suffixes and prefixes, averaging and writing a main idea and supporting ideas.

Vicki Inouye, president of the Inouye Foundation, volunteered her help and supplied prizes for the day’s event. A familiar face on campus, Inouye volunteers as a seventh- and eighth-grade math teacher four days a week.

“I absolutely love Drake,” she said during a break between the math activities she supervised. ‘It’s a unique, wonderful mix of high content and individual nurturing. Their emotional, academic and physical needs are met.”

That love is shared by Drake students.

”Drake is a school,” student Jacob Leon said, “but it is also a home.”

Classmate Magdiel Ruiz said Drake was the “…best school I have ever gone to,” while student Antonio Varelas added, “At Drake, they like me for who I am.”