Math-U Project

What?

During the middle of the first term, fueled by my eagerness to find areas for research, I was speaking to one of the teachers regarding a group of children she has in her class who find it difficult to concentrate especially in Maths. I had just come into the possession of some Math-Us and needed to get to grips with them.

On the spur of the moment, I offered to 'try them out' on these children to see how they got on.

The first experience was not very good. I took the children in a group of six and found that they had difficulty remembering the sequence of requesting a question, counting the objects, putting in the answer, clicking the enter button to receive a tick or a cross, and then going on to the next question. I had chosen a very easy task of counting 5 objects, as the main target was to learn how to use the units.

Within a week they all became independent, including two who had never completed a task independently before. The look of achievement on their face as they walked back to class was incredible. Praise was given by myself from the start, and eventually this was picked up by other members of staff, several children began looking for praise as they left the staff room quickly after achieving their task.

One child had a spell of not trying to answer the questions correctly, the Math-U normally gives 20 questions, however if the correct answers fall below a certain level, it gives another 10, then another 10, when this was explained to him, he took more care over the answers he was giving.

They went from taking over 10 mins to less than two in the course of a term.

Increasing the difficulty on the Math-U's had different effects on different children, some took it in their stride, where as others found it too difficult and I needed to return to the original task.