NJ Herald
October 16, 1998

FANS Workshop held in Sparta

By Charlie Wallen
Herald Staff Writer

SPARTA -- Around 15 Sparta parents attended a workshop Thursday at Helen Morgan School to learn about the FANS hands-on approach to New Jersey classroom teaching and learning.

The workshop informs parents about New Jersey's new standards and how to help children achieve them.

Trained volunteer Georgeanna Fernandez told the group that FANS stood for Families Achieving the New Standards, a three-year statewide project sponsored by the New Jersey Mathematics Coalition and funded by the National Science Foundation and the AT&T foundation and located at Rutgers University in New Brunswick.

Fernandez said the purpose of the workshop is to help parents understand FANS' mission and its standards and to be able to help children meet those standards.

"It's to inform you why it's important for all children to achieve these standards," Fernandez said.

FANS' goal includes helping children to be successful, achieve high standards in math and science, set high expectations and to have parents help children achieve them.

New Jersey Science Standards include having students learn to identify systems of interacting components and understand how their interactions combine to produce the overall behavior of the system; to develop problem-solving, decision-making and inquiry skills; to develop understanding of how people of various cultures contribute to advancement of science and technology; to integrate mathematics as a problem-solving tool in science to gain understanding of natural laws and to understand the origin, evolution and structure of the universe.

New Jersey Mathematic Standards include developing ability to pose and solve mathematical problems; communicate mathematically through written, oral, symbolic and visual forms of expression and to develop understanding of statistics and probability.

The school's assistant principal Frank Altmire said, "Helen Morgan School is very innovative and progressive. Teachers are up to date with the standards."

Added principal Dennis Tobin: 'We have about 800 students and have revised grades K through 4 to align with the state curriculum core content standards. The standards are there. The curriculum is there. It's about using a learner-active approach to teach hands-on."

During the workshop, parents were given the opportunity to try the new hands-on approach after watching portions of a video showing New Jersey students and teachers using the new method.