Attention Pre-K to grade 12 teachers!
Imagine your classroom buzzing with excitement as students are practicing their math facts and connecting globally with kids around the world. It sounds like a dream right? Well, your dream (and your students’) has come true. Learn how your students can participate in this exciting FREE World Maths Day event and beat last year’s world record of two million students from 204 countries correctly answering 452,681,681 math problems.
What is this amazing event? World Maths Day is a FREE math facts competition that runs from February 1st to March 3rd. Students from all around the world unite to participate in breaking the world record for correctly answering math facts. Take at look at the commercial for World Maths Day to get a better idea about the event. Also be sure to check back here because I will be posting a quick video so you can see my students in action in the next few days.
I have been participating in this event for three years now and I look forward to it every year. From the very first day I got involved, I was excited and hooked on the event. I love that it's highly motivating for my students to want to learn and practice their math facts. It was amazing to see the quick progress and the excitement it brought to children. This event gives students a global perspective and helps bridge connections between them and other kids all around the world. After participating in World Maths Day, my students saw that they were similar in many ways to kids from far away places. They became much more interested and eager to explore their world.
When starting the competition with my kindergarten class, the first day for the past two years was very challenging for my students. They were not used to solving math facts this way. The next day we logged in, they started getting better and better. Last year my colleague’s class came into watch and work with my students on World Maths Day practice games. The teacher was amazed at the level of my students. She asked what I had done to get them to know their facts this well. “You’re looking at it.” I said. She was shocked to find out that we just started playing and my students became so motivated they wanted to learn their facts. As a class we did quick minilessons on how to get even faster and how to count on to help with their addition. During games I would sit with the kids and help them to try different strategies to solve their math facts. They were so highly motivated, with a purpose for learning their facts, that they caught on very quickly.
This year I have a little boy that wanted to play and be as fast as possible. He wasn’t sure how to get the problems correct and was just typing numbers, yet still having fun. I sat with him for a few minutes and helped him to “think the higher number and count up the other number.” After a short while he got it. Now he gets so many of the facts correct that he is trying to figure out a way to be even faster. This event has changed him as a math learner. His confidence has boosted and I can see it coming out in other areas of learning.
I wouldn’t miss this fun, learning event for anything and highly recommend that you get your class and school signed up. You can register for free starting February 1st each year and you can practice until the main event starts on March 3rd. The only difficult piece is the username students must use to sign in. It is long and difficult, but you will be surprised that your students learn to type it in.
Source: blogs.scholastic
