Washington Primary School teachers are always striving to take the stress out of math, but truth be told, students don’t look at it with dread as others might. The youngsters like a good challenge and have fun trying to figure things out.
Take kindergarten teacher Kristen Thatcher’s class earlier this week. To paraphrase from a 1769 play, students are “snug like bugs in a rug over math,” Washington Principal Michelle Richards said. “The students are having fun practicing addition facts to 12. They use two dice and mini bug erasers in their ‘bug jars’ to help them write an addition number sentence. It is important that we keep our students engaged in different ways when supporting their skill development. Mrs. Thatcher is always looking for ways to keep learning fun and to help students make connections throughout the day.”
After collecting close to 200 boxes of cereal as donations to the Helping Hand Rescue Mission, a group of third grade students counted and graphed the boxes of cereal for students to analyze. First and second grade students were able to analyze the life-sized bar graph to identify which types of cereal had the most and least donations. Identifying different ways for students to make real-life connections to math is a priority.
“At Washington Primary School, we strive to engage students in skill development using various modalities,” Dr. Richards said. “During the month of April, all students participated in an ST Math Challenge. The students worked collectively to navigate JiJi (a beloved penguin in the ST Math software package) through various challenges while at the same time building their fluency skills in mathematics.”
Washington math teacher Christine Lofaro, who also “coaches” colleagues in instructional math practices and activities, was able to compile and share the school’s ST Math statistics for the month of April.
During the first week of the challenge running from April 5-11, 248 students completed puzzles with the total number of all puzzles completed amounting to 11,360 over the course of the week.
During the second week of the challenge running from April 12-18, 260 students completed puzzles with the total number of all puzzles completed totaling 9,788.
During the third week of the challenge running from April 19-25, 274 students completed puzzles with the total number of all puzzles completed coming in at a staggering 15,775.
“So far this year, Washington students have completed a total of 145,057 math puzzles with Jiji,” said Dr. Richards proudly.
