By Cory Bilicko
Managing Editor
Students in Masumi Hogan’s first-grade class were far surpassing the California content standards for mathematics when they sat at Baja Sonora in Bixby Knolls last Thursday morning and counted the beans in the huge jar that had been on display at the restaurant for weeks prior.
Hogan had her Longfellow Elementary students count out sets of 10 beans, put them into small, plastic cups and then put 10 filled cups onto each plate. Then she tallied the number of plates on a wipe board for the kids to see. “It’s a hands-on activity,” Hogan said, adding that the task addresses other math standards of understanding place value and counting by tens.
Before beginning the count, she had even involved the literal bean counters in the planning. “I asked them, ‘How can we count?'” she explained, targeting yet another standard, which is “determine the approach, materials and strategies to be used.”
Putting it in layperson’s terms, first-grader Omar Awaida said, “She wants to see how high we can count.”
The container of beans had been sitting near the cash register at Baja Sonora so customers could guesstimate the amount as part of a contest. Owner Mike Mendelsohn organized the student bean count with Longfellow principal Brian Moskovitz, who dropped by the restaurant during the activity. “I wanted to involve the local community, and I couldn’t think of a better way to do it,” said Mendelsohn.
When asked if the beans would later be cooked, Mendelsohn said, “They couldn’t count all the beans in the time allotted, so no; they’ll take them back to school to finish the count.”
While the kids were still putting the legumes into cups, they were asked what they thought the total would be. Imani Robinson guessed “1,000,” but Matthew Kempfer doubled her guess.
The final count was 31,996 beans. The winner of the contest was Elissa Tedesco, only four beans off with her guess of 32,000. “I looked at the barrel and estimated how many beans there would be in one row,” she said. “Then I counted the rows from top to bottom. I was waiting on a bean-and-cheese burrito, so I had some time to kill.” Tedesco won catering for 30 people.
The students were winners too; each one left Baja Sonora with a $5 gift certificate and a more developed sense of really big numbers.
