New Mobile Math Lab Comes to Portsmouth Christian Academy

Portsmouth Christian Academy of Dover is monitoring the progress of its new mobile math lab, a program initiated to benefit the school’s third, fourth and fifth grade students.

Run by Dr. Connie Lawrence, Lower School Principle, the mobile lab allows for greater student engagement in the classroom, integrating face-to-face learning with technology-based instruction, according to a press statement.

Primarily used for math topics (in addition to English and grammar), the mobile lab serves largely fourth grade students at PCA, as well as accelerated third graders at that level. It is also available for fifth grade students whose learning would benefit from the interactive program.

The mobile math lab consists of 20 HP tablets able to transport across PCA’s classrooms. These tablets run on cloud-based software such as DreamBox Learning, an initiative to close the learning gap in math across elementary and middle schools worldwide. Because of its digital nature, students can log in and access the tools from home to further practice their skills.

“The great thing about our math cluster approach is that we are no longer constrained by all students having to move at the same pace,” Lawrence said. “The mobile lab provides greater support so that, having ‘raised the ceiling’ for our high performing math students, we have more tools to ‘raise the floor’ for those who find math a little more difficult.”

In appropriate cases, this strategy allows for a “flipped classroom” teaching approach, where the delivery of instruction is online and implementation of skills is done with face-to-face teacher guidance. This blend of approaches allows for a students to gain personal confidence in mathematical thinking and problem-solving. To PCA, engagement in education is top priority, and its Lower School students have, so far, embraced the approach.