Mathematics has a pervasive influence on our everyday lives and excelling in this field opens up a lifetime of professional opportunities.
Starting young and capturing the imagination is one of the important foundations to ACG Sunderland’s Maths programme.
Two high-performing Year four students are a great example of the Maths programme MAC (Math Achievement Challenge) in action.
Niket Shah and Aaran Kumar are both maths whizz children and this is the second year they have been involved with the primary extension programme.
At only nine to ten years old, you may wonder why this is important.
Kent Favel, ACG Sunderland Primary Principal and Maths extension teacher explains that even at this age it is about showing how Maths principals are connected to our everyday life, that Maths is something that is always around us, weaving in and out of daily activities.
“Aaran and Niket are motivated to achieving special Math badges which cover a variety of subjects from creating different ice cream flavours to studying puzzles and dynamic numbers. The three way system of evaluation works well too, with the student self-evaluating, the parent evaluation and finally the teacher evaluation,” he said.
Identifying competencies
These foundations are set for the students to advance into college where the Maths Faculty Coordinator Susan Jackson is quick to identify each student’s strengths and weaknesses. Years 7 to 9 follow the Lower Cambridge Checkpoint curriculum in conjunction with the key Competencies of the New Zealand Curriculum which fully prepares students for success in both IGCSE and A-Level Mathematics in the future.
“We place a large amount of value in having the Year Seven and Eight students as part of the college rather than a full primary environment that seems to be becoming the norm in New Zealand education now.
The specialist teaching this group receives is lifting them to great heights with their Mathematics and this is a great reflection of their own work ethic and the hard work put in by the dedicated teaching staff here at ACG Sunderland.” Nathan Villars, ACG Sunderland College Principal said.
Ms Jackson evaluates each student as they start each topic and tailors the Maths programme to fit each individual.
This includes creating individual work booklets and projects to tap into what skills they need to develop or conversely where to extend their growing minds.
Anurag Nadgir and Tirth Thakar passed their latest Algebra pre-test with flying colours and have been working with extension topics all year.
Rather than just giving them the next year’s course, Susan looks where their interest is, Anurag has been working with vectors and Tirth with polynomial division out of the Year 12 and 13 courses.
They both enjoy the challenge of the extension programme and are always looking for the next thing to learn.
Ms Jackson likes to see the success of all the students in her class, and is motivated by their ‘light-bulb’ moments.
Tailoring the programme to meet the demands of the high performing students is as equally rewarding as working individually with the students that have less natural ability. Bringing them up to speed in such a fundamental subject is giving them skills for life.
The above copy was supplied by the Editorial Team at ACG Sunderland.
