A Math Power Contest, which is expected to raise interest levels and boost grades in the subject among both Primary and Secondary Schools, is set to kick off on Thursday.
The contest, the third of its kind, is done on a yearly basis and will begin with 60 primary schools congregating at 12 primary school centers to compete in round one of the competition.
They are competing for 12 spots in the semi-finals which will take place on April 15th while the elimination round for secondary schools will take place on May 1st.
“We think it is important because one of the main objectives is to generate interest in mathematics among our students,” Communications Officer in the Ministry of Education Dionne Durand told DNO.
Durand says the Ministry of Education has realized that examination results in mathematics are not satisfactory.
“We’ve noticed that mathematics performance is really not satisfactory from our students so the ministry has identified several measures to improve mathematics and we see the math power contest [as] just another way of generating interest in mathematics,” she noted.
The Math Power Contest is sponsored by the National Bank of Dominica.
“And they’ve invested $40,000 in the competition and at the end of the finals of both primary and secondary schools we can expect that the students will walk away with some nice prizes,” Durand said.
There are two rounds to the competition. The first round is called the ‘speed and accuracy round’ where students will be given a series of Mathematics questions in which they have to work them out mentally within 15 seconds. Then there will be the ‘problem solving round’.
I like that too,someone is thinking.
DNO Can you update us with the result
A good initiative that needs to be applauded. However, mathematics performance will improve when the following variables are combined:
1. Parents (even if they do not comprehend the problems at hand) spend time with their children when doing homework or other tasks.
2. We stop the practice of placing UNTRAINED teachers in the classroom; (remember the saying that doctors KILL their errors while teachers MULTIPLY them). An untrained teacher will multiply the wrong teaching strategies employed and the consequencies will be horrendous and last a life time if not corrected.
3. More RESEARCH needs to be conducted as it relates to the INTERACTION between teachers and students. Spady (1970) suggested that student failure is best explained by examining the INTERACTION between students and the academic and social systems of the school. He posited that students who were successful at integrating into the social and academic systems were more likely to be successful. According to Spady, successful integration into the academic performance or intellectual development and close friendships were indicative of successful integration.
4. The Ministry of Education must have in place a process to identify, recruit, train, employ and REWARD teachers.
HOTEP!
I love these fresh initiatives! Putting a new spin to excitement in education! Its interesting that the private sector has not seen the opportunity to market healthy food. I can see slogans like as “XXXXXX power to the brain” or something like that. Not that I am advocating too much marketing at the youth but there is still room for public-private partnership in initiatives like that, done in a decent way (win-win)!
Brilliant!
This should be done with English as well. Our high school students have a problem with the English language. Education is one of life’s most important luxury.
Do the math contest. Its a good thing. But the real problem is that we have many math teachers in our primary schools who are able to to teach mathematics. They do not have Math at CXC level and are still failing the math for the in-sevice teachers at the State College. You cannot teach what you do not know.
Give the math teachers at the primary schools, the National Assessment Test in mathematics. See how many would pass. It would indeed be a disappointing result.
I love that idea!!!
“I like that. I like that. I really like that. !!”