Photo by Yuvie Styles
The ‘ooh’s’ and ‘ah’s’ of amazement at the latest classroom transformation, or rapping about division set to the tune of I’m Different by 2 Chainz, are just some of the daily sounds that can be heard from Monique Marquez Jackson’s third grade classroom at Stevens Park Elementary.
Marquez Jackson began her teaching career virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic, but since returning to the classroom has learned to use her creativity to fuel student engagement in her lessons. Last school year, a series of math raps written by Marquez Jackson and sung by her students went viral.
“I’ve been trying since I got here to find ways to connect with my students, and I try to incorporate things that they can relate to, that they’re experiencing and that they understand,” Marquez Jackson says. “I incorporated music and rap songs to create three songs that are based on math vocabulary and math concepts that (the students) need to master in third grade.”
Marquez Jackson’s songs are based on three concepts that she noticed students struggle with most: area and perimeter, division and fractions. The division rap is the most popular because of its catchy nature, she says.
“I have videos of all the third graders, all the bilingual classes, all the general education classes, just blasting it and singing it in the hallway on the last day of school,” Marquez Jackson says. “It just stuck with them. I feel like all the parents knew the song by the end of the year.”
When it comes to writing the songs, Marquez Jackson sits down a week before she plans to begin teaching the new subject. She picks a song she’d like to use for the tune, and makes a list of information she wants the song to cover and compares the original lyrics with that list.
Finally, Marquez Jackson learns the song herself to make sure it sounds good, before recording a video of the song and accompanying hand motions for her students. The videos are posted online so the students are able to revisit the subject matter as they need it.
“We’ll play it a few times and they usually get the hang of it and they’ll learn it by the next day,” Marquez Jackson says. “During our independent practice time, the students have access to it on Google Classroom and they have headphones so they’ll ask ‘Can we listen to the songs?’ I have a whole playlist of them so I’ll let them jam out while they’re working.”
Another way that Marquez Jackson energizes her students’ classroom experience is by changing up the look of her classroom in what she calls a “classroom transformation” while preparing the students for the STAAR test.
Third grade is the first year students take the state standardized test, so her transformations started as a way to help keep students from becoming too stressed.
“They work extremely hard all year long, and third grade is a really difficult year,” Marquez Jackson says. “The least I can do is reward them by creating a super fun and magical, exciting place for them to come and learn.”
Each room transformation that Marquez Jackson plans lasts for a week. She often stays at school until 6:30 p.m. the Friday before a new transformation to set it up, and comes in at 6 a.m. the following Monday to put the finishing touches on the decorations.
During the 2022-23 school year, Marquez Jackson transformed her classroom for March Madness by covering the room in orange tissue paper, blowing up two-dozen basketball beach balls and creating basketball-themed review games.
Of Marquez Jackson’s 32 students, 25 were boys who especially enjoyed the basketball-themed week.
“(They) were like ‘Oh my god, it feels like our birthday every day that we come in,’” she says.
After March Madness, Marquez Jackson transformed her classroom into a Starbucks cafe, with posters featuring phrases like ‘Math. Coffee. Repeat.’ and a “coffee menu” lining out the topics for the week. The class learned about problem solving, input and output, money and coins and data during the Starbucks theme.
DISD requires elementary students to complete an exit ticket, a short assignment that is handed in at the end of each day, and Marquez Jackson incorporates the exit tickets into the classroom transformations.
“For money systems, I print out dollar bills that have the Starbucks logo on them,” Marquez Jackson says. “If they get up to an 85 (on their exit ticket) they get $5, if they get an 85-100 they get $10, and every day before they leave my class they earn prizes.”
Through the classroom transformations, Marquez Jackson has garnered support from parents who donate supplies for each new theme. Other teachers have often asked how she is able to pull off the transformations, and she credits parents for their help.
“They are very, very supportive of all the classroom transformations,” Marquez Jackson says. “I would let them know a week before like ‘Hey this transformation is coming up on this date.’ I would really try to involve them and they love it.”
After her students finish with STAAR, Marquez Jackson focuses on teaching them financial literacy. Students work either by themselves or in teams of two to three to create their own business and product. Last year, the work was shown off at Stevens Park Elementary’s first ever market day, hosted entirely by her class.
During the market day, each group of students had their own booth with a poster and decorations relating to the products they created during class. To advertise the event, students made posters and invitations to hang up around the school.
In the end, 13 classes visited the market.
“Parents and I decorated the entire library like a mercado,” Marquez Jackson says. “It was a huge success. We had our executive directors visit, we had all the staff members visit. It was so awesome to see everything they did themselves.”
