World Math Day at Jack Abrams School
A group of Jack Abrams Intermediate School students celebrated World Math Day last week by competing live online against youngsters from across the globe, answering challenging “mental math” problems and having fun, too.
Math teachers Colleen Mahoney and Laraine Schirripa spurred their students’ participation in the event. “This was such a great competition and a wonderful learning opportunity for our students” Principal Mary Stokkers said.
Each time the youngsters logged onto the event’s website, a search engine would identify where other students were competing from at that moment. A hard copy of the world map was placed on the bulletin board behind the computers so students could quickly find a country’s location. The list grew throughout the day as more students logged on.
The Jack Abrams School children competed against their counterparts from the United Kingdom, Canada, Turkey, Romania, Bahrain and South Africa.
“They quickly realized that students in Asia were not participating, which was unexpected” Ms. Schirripa said. The youngsters kicked around some ideas as to why this was so and some utilized information they learned during social studies lessons to come up with an answer.
One student offered an explanation that seemed to make perfect sense, saying “they are asleep because it is nighttime there.” Mrs. Mahoney and Ms. Schirripa used this segment as a teachable moment, quickly infusing information about the world’s time zones into what was otherwise a math lesson.
Mrs. Stokkers said she hopes to have the entire school participate in next year’s World Math Day. The initiative is for all grade levels and age groups and attracts thousands of students from around the world. “It was amazing to see our students get so excited and enthusiastic over math,” the principal said.
World Math Day seeks to “unite the world in numbers” and based upon the experience of the Jack Abrams School students that participated in it, the event’s goal was accomplished.
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