North Penn Encouraging Students to Stay 'Mathematically Active' During Summer

LANSDALE, PA – The start of school year just around the corner, and the North Penn School District encourages students to continue to keep their brains active. Summer vacation offers students the chance to further develop their educational skills on a wider spectrum and through more liberating platforms, especially in the area of mathematics, the district said.

According to research cited by the district, practicing math during the summer helps to stem the “summer learning loss.” Kids can lose more than two months of grade level equivalency in math over the summer, and the loss can become cumulative, worsening year after year.

At the elementary level, North Penn teachers have sent home the “Getting Ready” lessons from Go Math! Those lessons help students with prerequisite skills needed for the next grade level. Families are encouraged to complete these lessons with their students to keep their brains active and healthy, a press release states.

Another way to keep students mathematically active is to watch math enrichment videos. YouTube is filled with lots of great, educational, well-produced videos about math that parents and students can watch together. Kids.gov (https://kids.usa.gov/watch-videos/math/index.shtml) is another interactive math video/learning site. A favorite video resource of educators, pointed out by the district, is the Khan Academy (https://kids.usa.gov/watch-videos/math/index.shtml).

There are also some great board games that can help improve students’ arithmetic, like Monopoly, but there are plenty of others that can introduce math in different ways, the release states.

Logic games like Sudoku or Mastermind require students to work out permutations, for example. Chess and Rubik’s cubes do the same. These games are often about using logic and sequencing to think ahead -- a useful skill not only to budding mathematicians, but aspiring scientists, lawyers and carpenters too -- just about anyone, in fact. An online math game program http://www.coolmath-games.com/ may be another way to engage students in mathematical activities, the district said.