Fifth and sixth-grade students program and build program robots for the sumo-style competition with the help of Cal Poly Pomona engineers. Educators believe that the hands-on program helps improve math’s relevance and makes learning the “boring” subject more interesting.

Christian Avila, 10-year old son of a Mexican immigrant restaurant worker never thought math would be fun. Math, for him, was a little boring because it involved a lot of multiplication and division, and working with sheets.

Things changed last year after Cal Poly Pomona educators introduced the robot program to Christian’s school, Montvue Elementary, Pomona. The goal was for kids to get excited about math by making it uncomplicated and more realistic by incorporating problems like programming a robot so that it would knock out his opponent inside a “ring”.

Eleven-year old Juan Perez, a teammate of Christian, was all smiles when he exclaimed his joy in finding something related to math that they really like.

Cal Poly Pomona associate professor and math education specialist Cesar Larriva revealed that he had become frustrated with how math was taught in the United States. Students were not able to relate manipulation of symbols and computation with real life. In that manner, the teaching loses its authenticity since people do not really fill out sheets with numbers and computations. When the robot program came into conception, math became a whole new experience for many students. Larriva made sure he had two classrooms for the program, as well as handpicked teachers who were raring to apply the program to their classes.

The students assembled the robots with Lego parts and programmed their machines on a laptop. Larriva and his colleagues encouraged them to figure it out on their own, aiming to develop students’ skills in critical thinking, problem solving, and scientific inquiry.

Indeed, fractions, measurements, decimals, and everything that is math has become more meaningful because of the robot program. In addition, students have become more interested and more responsive in their math classes.