'Flexible' math skills on display at school board meeting

We all can remember math class from our school days.

Whether it was our favourite subject or not, there was one set of rules to follow to come up with the correct answers to math questions.

As parents and teachers now know, that approach has changed over the years.

Using white dry erase lapboards, markers and varying mental arithmetic methods, three Mountain View Public School pupils — Gr. 3 student Jackson Jonah and Gr. 4 students Rhyan O’Connor and Everett Melanson — demonstrated their math skills to answer a multiplication question at Tuesday's Algoma District School Board meeting.

ADSB administrators and trustees, white boards and markers in hand, also participated in the exercise.

The three pupils were guided by Mountain View Public School teacher Michael Kelly.

“There are all these different ways of getting the same answer,” Kelly told the board.

“We were really happy tonight that we had a chance from Rhyan, Everett and Jackson to really learn more about that. We really are focusing on flexibility with numbers and that’s one of our goals that comes through in our student achievement plan, for our students to be nimble and flexible in the strategies that they use,” said Linda Kirby, ADSB Gr. JK-12 system administrator. 

“We’re trying to get kids to be a little more flexible and creative with their use of numbers rather than just following an algorithm. If you open up strategies and different entry points for kids who are working at different levels it allows them to feel comfortable and confident to share their work when there’s no such thing as a wrong strategy or wrong solution to come up with the right answer,” Kelly told SooToday.

“I love teaching math. I’ve been doing it a long time,” Kelly said.