Utilization of Traditional Palm Art in Teaching Science and Mathematics

Excellence in the teaching is the most common goal of all teachers particularly in Science and Mathematics. The many challenges that science and mathematics teachers and educators face today make teaching difficult. With this, this quantitative-qualitative research described the different science and mathematics concepts developed while doing the traditional palm art (designing coconut leaves for Palm Sunday). The six (6) participants composed of residents in the different barangays basically with low knowledge of science and math were invited to do palm art. Recording and semi-structured interview were used to gather the responses while doing the palm art. It revealed that the Star Design accounted for the following mathematics concepts such as the square and its area, the right triangle and the pyramid. This helped them understand the number of sides they developed or created before making or finishing a certain design. For the science concepts it presented the concept or idea of the stars its shape and its sizes. After which the created stars were used as concrete visual of how the stars look. The next design was the Puso which formed the mathematics concept on cone, tetrahedron and solid figures while for the science, the concepts identified during the formation of the design were the phases of matter (solid), and composition and balance. The developed design can be utilized as a contextualized instructional material for teaching science and mathematics. After the lessons were introduced and presented using the palm art, the effectiveness of the contextualized instructional materials was determined in terms of its utilization in motivation, presentation of the lesson and discussion of the lesson. Results revealed that the palm art as used for instructional design was described as excellent in terms of motivation, very satisfactory in presenting lessons for mathematics and science, and very satisfactory to be used as part of the discussion.