Grade 7 Black Lake class places top 5 in Mathletics

Principal Steven Thatcher said they had a couple teachers that really saw the benefit of the interactive math source, so as of this year, everybody from Grades 1 to 12 is registered and can go on Mathletics.

According to Thatcher, Ms. Clarke’s Grade 7 students have improved a lot since they started doing Mathletics.

“The Grade 7 class back in the first two to three months was in the top twenty of that class, so we have slowly been going up every year,” said Thatcher.

Thatcher said the school has licensed Mathletics for its students for three years now. This year they are excited the PAGC is footing the bill for the licensing fee.

“PAGC has really pushed this, so this year and for the next two years the PAGC is paying for all the PAGC schools to have mathletics,” said Thatcher.

Edward Mirasty, PAGC director of education, said they have helped purchase between 6,000 and 6,500 school licensing agreements. He said this is part of the council’s innovative and engaging school plan.

“Online learning makes it possible for students anywhere to access materials, which better their learning,” said Mirasty.

Thatcher said using this type of technology, allows students to practice their math skills more than they could before. He said using the software comes as second nature for the younger generation.

“Mathletics is very interactive, the students can see how well they’re doing,” said Thatcher. “It’s a modern way of teaching the math and the kids are enjoying it.”

Thatcher said the students are having great success and feeling much better with Mathletics and math in general. He said one student even told his teacher he almost didn’t make it to school because he was up late “playing my Mathletics.”

The program uses medals to reward Grade 7 to 12 students. When the students score 85 per cent or higher they can receive a gold, silver or bronze medal for curriculum mastery. For children in Grades 1 to 6, there is a rocket ship point system to monitor their progress.

Thatcher said the students aren’t the only ones who have enjoyed using the program. Teachers have enjoyed using Mathletics to modify their teaching to meet students’ needs.

“They teach the concepts, like school used to be with textbooks,” said Thatcher. “Mathletics more augments, kind of helps them with the concepts and it allows the kids to be at it all the time.”

Thatcher said the only problem with the online program is they don’t have the broadband capability to support all of the students in Black Lake.

“In our school we have 170 computers, 180 iPad’s and we only get three megabytes, so when everything is being used, our system just crashes and we barely can get any Internet at all,” said Thatcher.

Mirasty said the average amount of bandwidth ranges between 10 and 100 megabytes in Saskatchewan. Whereas Black Lake only has three megabytes of Bandwidth.

Thatcher said SaskTel is working on bringing fiber up to Points North. However, places like Stoney, Uranium City, Fond Du Lac, and Black Lake are forced to operate on weak service towers.

“The only way we get highspeed Internet is through a series of towers that go from Stoney to Points North and South and the most they give is three megabytes,” said Thatcher.

Thatcher said at their school alone there are 400 students registered in Mathletics.

Kbruch@panow.com

On Twitter: @KaylaBruch1

by Kayla Bruch

Grade 7 Black Lake class places top 5 in Mathletics

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