At Washington Academic Middle School in the Sanger Unified School District, students in Samantha Nixon’s eighth grade math class recently tackled how to organize and tabulate a large fast-food order.

EdSource

“Start chatting in your groups. How many hamburgers did he order altogether?” Nixon asked the students.

The students noisily debated the math problem, including whether a large Coke and a large Sprite should be counted together.

“Six, seven, eight; that’s eight,” one student proudly counted aloud. “He wants two more (hamburgers with everything), that’s 10. That’s 11. And then that’s 13. So, 13 hamburgers.”

Nixon’s classroom commotion is part of Sanger Unified’s educational process. The instructional approach involves engaging students “through chitter-chatter.”

“We don’t need qu

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