Teacher implements app to improve math scores

Educators with Bonneville Joint School District 93 are working to implement an online application to improve student learning in math.

The interest started with Summit Hills Elementary math teacher William Stewart. He said throughout his years of teaching it was hard to keep his students engaged.

“Math practice for us was dead. It wasn’t engaging, the students didn’t like it. It was me against them,” he said. “I tried everything I could think of. We did paper and pencil timed tests. I’ve tried games that I made up.”

Stewart said he was given the opportunity to try something different when he was contacted by ExploreLearning.com. The organization offered a grant that would fund his students use of the Reflex Math Fluency Fact App.

“They love it. I tried to take it away for a day and they weren’t having it,” said Stewart. “We’re into division and multiplication of multidigit numbers, and before they struggled with single digit numbers and now they have the skills to do the more complex mathematics.”

Stewart said his students math scores improved drastically, so much that the Summit Hills Elementary PTO funded a $2,696 license to make the app available to the whole school.

The app is game-based and adapts to each student. As students complete each math fact level, students are rewarded with coins. Students are able to purchase avatars to personalize their gaming experience. Teachers say the game-based app keeps students motivated, while sending assessment reports to instructors.

“From my log-in, I can see everything behind the scenes. I see how much time they spend and I see how many facts they have acquired,” said Stewart.

Stewart said he hopes this will become a statewide application, but his primary goal is to see this in every math classroom within the school district. It would take more than $68,000 to implement the app district-wide.

According to a 2013 study by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, about 60 percent of Idaho fourth and eighth-graders are not proficient in math and reading.