Mathematics is not engaging for a lot of learners and this is specifically the case for young students. Learning with theory and books proves mundane for young students and games are the solution! How? The Gamification of Mathematics. Games have become a very common part of culture in the young and for due reason. Games are stimulants. It is a way for a person to experience something without having had even left a room. Entire story lines and narratives are created through games. Here is how bringing them to Mathematics helps.

The primary purpose of any game is to let the player enjoy and engage in an activity that leads to winning. Math curriculums tend to be heavily leaning towards traditional academic ways of instruction. Therefore, teaching mathematics with games has taken such precedence in recent times, where teaching students with application is the gold standard of education. Games provide the perfect platform to the students to be able to apply their concepts and learnings.

Due to the nature of the subject, learning Mathematics is commonly an intense activity that involves a lot of time and patience. Through games, since students learn to apply their concepts and use them, the learning experience becomes far more meaningful.

Making Math Studies a Rewarding Experience

Motivation is another positive attribute that comes from teaching with games. Games are inherently designed to bring about a certain degree of competitive spirit, while also providing the player with a tangible goal to meet. Translating this mindset into teaching Mathematics brings about such attributes of gaming to the student’s learning experience.

The nature of gaming itself helps students with taking the stress away from learning Math. As opposed to traditional ways of teaching Math, games allow the students to step away from the formal way of learning. This enables them to learn with application and understanding.

Mathletics emerging curriculum blends the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation factors to provide gamified learning experience to keep the students engaged in the subject.

Health Competition without any Complication

Games also make it easier for the student to build up on their skills steadily, while choosing their levels of understanding and applications. This also allows for students to work with their own personal levels of understanding while also learning from other students in the activities. This tackles on a common complaint from students about Math, that it’s too complicated. There are no complications in games, right? It is only a challenge!

Re-attempting to Level-up the Game

The repetitive nature of Mathematics also benefits from games since it gears the learners to try again even after they have been unsuccessful on a ‘level’. This results in students making multiple tries, whereas they could have simply forfeited in case of a regular mathematical problem. Building a resistance to trial fatigue is also something games do very well. Flappy bird a game from 2013, is a great example of this. Players will repeatedly try to win a game that was unwinnable! That is the kind of spirit gaming brings to Mathematics!

While being a great tool to teach, games also allow students to bring about independence in their learning. Independent thought and understanding of concepts go a long way for students which is applicable not just for Mathematics. It is a skill that is useful for the students in all kinds of learning and in life. It allows them to think for themselves and find a solution to their problems.

Skills Development at its Best

Other benefits of gamification of mathematics include helping the student develop skills such as strategic thinking, problem solving & application. Theory learning is not able to facilitate such an effective way to learn, because of how the human brain works. Students learn with experience and trial, which is exactly what games can create.

Mathematics is generally associated with other ‘boring’ activities by students and gamification has a serious potential to change that. Bringing in games to Math not only makes it less of an intimidating activity, but also makes it a fun process for the student. Helping them build a foundation of concepts with the help of real-world, tangible applications. Teaching Math with games also helps eliminate a phenomenon in students referred to as ‘Math anxiety’. With its truly engaging and accessible nature Math games enable students to not be intimidated by concepts of Mathematics, since it is a game anyway, right?

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Most schools and play centers stress on teaching children the ‘phonemic sounds’ of the letters before introducing them to the letter names. Well, are you confused? Did you know English language has 44 unique sounds, despite there being only 26 letters in the alphabet (A-Z). Each of the 26 letters have a dedicated sound and some sounds are produced by the combination of two letters.

What is phonics?

Phonics is the most effective way of teaching preschool children to read and then learn to write. It helps children comprehend words and distinguish one word from the other. The goal of teaching phonics is to help children correlate the sound to the spelling so that the word can be decoded easily. Knowledge about phonics will also help children identify which letters to use while forming the written words.

Being able to read the words correctly, increases the child’s reading fluency. He is more confident and no more struggles with the printed words he sees in a book or on screen. Even if an unfamiliar word which the child has never read before is presented to him, he is able to apply the rules of phonics and read it correctly.

How early can a child start learning phonics?

Usually children begin learning phonics as soon as they say goodbye to their toddlerhood age. A three to four-year-old is quite equipped to start his journey into phonetic expressions and rhymes.

To begin with, a lot of action songs are introduced to the child.

For example: See me play on the drum. Playing drums is lots of fun, with a /d/-/d/-/d/-/d/-/d/-/d/-/d/-/d/-/d/. See me play upon the drum!

In this song, the child pretends to hold ‘drum sticks’ and bang the imaginary drum to make the /d/-/d/-/d/ sound.

Fun activities for children to learn Phonics

You know what the best part about teaching phonics is? There is no rule book or a paper and pencil way of learning letter sounds. Educators and parents can be as creative as they want. Children can sing, interact, dance, and read to learn by play-way method while having lots of fun with their fellow learners. Here are a few interesting ideas to teach phonics to young children:

Online Phonics Game

ReadingEggs presents unique online games to develop a strong foundation of phonetic awareness amongst your little champs. ‘Fast Phonics’ gives them access to over a hundred highly interactive phonics games to boost letter-sound recognition skills from /a/ to /z/ and beyond.

This programme has 20-fun-filled levels and each level is represented as a ‘mountain peak’. Children gradually climb each mountain with every passing challenge in a systematic manner and get rewarded for it. There are a dozen of animated videos, printable worksheets, and fun-activities to enhance the child’s reading skills.

I-Spy Game

This is a very common game played to memorize association between the sounds and the words. From the magic box objects are made to appear one-by-one and the children have to guess the sound by which the object begins with. For example: show a ‘ring’ and children relate the /r/ sound to the object.

Dr. Seuss Books/Poems

Children love Dr. Seuss books for their very attractive illustrations and simple short stories. Some of the books you might already be familiar with are; ‘The Cat in The Hat’, ‘Fox in Socks’ and ‘Hop on Pop’. Do you notice a pattern in all the titles? Yes, they all rhyme. Read these to your children at bedtime or during the day to familiarize them with rhyming words and ask them to think of other words that rhyme to test their vocab.

Design a Phonics Wall

Set aside a corner in the classroom or your home to display a set of CVC (consonant – vowel- consonant) words and leave a blank for any one letter. Let children decide for themselves as to which ‘letter sound’ is missing and encourage them to fill in the blank. Once you think the child has mastered these set of words, change them and introduce another batch. This is simple, fun, and as children see it around them over and over again, they become better readers.

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E learning has been on the rise since the past decade, but never before has it been this effective and important at the same time! Online schools and other online ways of learning have taken popularity in UAE and specifically so in urban populations of Dubai, Abu Dhabi and so on. With the current global situations, the world needs an E-Learning solution that is practical and effective, right? The added challenge of online-school and keeping up with the curriculums has created the need for a solution that enables students to keep the right pace in their learning, while also bringing them to a level playing field. Smithsonian Science At-Home Kits are on their way to doing just that.

Effective home learning achieved

The curriculum designed in the Home-Kits by Smithsonian Science is crafted keeping the needs of the learners in mind. Courses are divided into consumable Modules with each having their independent goals. A storyline that allows the student to form logical progressions from their perspective is created for every module. Layers questions, situations and set-ups help keep the learner engaged and enables them to develop problem solving skills.

How does the learning happen?

The Home-Kit is designed to move the learning process to the home while not compromising on the quality of education the learner receives. The mediums include instructional videos, digital card sets and other digital resources. The video and resources guide the student through the topics in the module and enable them to learn and understand independently.

How are the lessons designed?

Creating an effective learning method is half the job done in learning, right? The Home-kit is designed in a 5-part format that allows the learner to follow a designed path.

Part 1: Getting started

The ‘Getting Started’ section includes questions and discussions that build a base for the topic of the module.

Part 2: Activities and Assignments

This section includes a list of the activities that are important for the lesson. The instructions to follow them are also listed here.

Part 3: Bringing it all together

Concluding the class activity and coming to a final understanding requires the students to share ideas and thoughts. This section does that with a run-down of all important points.

Part 4: Assessment

This section of the module includes and states which part of the lesson can be used to measure the level of understanding of the learner

Part 4: Additional Optional Assignments

This section of the module is for that extra level of challenge to the student. Since this is optional, it is an added experience. These assignments can be assigned to students if time allows.

Teaching methods are great but what about tests and results?

The assessment in the @Home-Kit is done with a multi-level system, through which a complete understanding of the students’ learning can be made. The system includes Pre-Assessment, Self Assessment and more.

Pre-Assessment:

This part of the assessment of the student is a preparatory stage, where they get to engage in tasks and activities that help measure their level of knowledge and their understanding

Formative Assessment:

Specific assessment strategies are used based on what part of the curriculum form the gist of the learning for the student. The section also instructs what to look for, in measuring the understanding levels of the student.

Self Assessment :

The learning of the module is not complete unless the student has had a genuine opportunity to learn. Self assessments help with that. They also allow the student to learn with greater independence and understanding of their own learning methods.

With their over 90 years of experience in education Carolina has built the perfect way for students to learn with high results inside their own homes. The flexible and valuable online resources enable the students from countries such as the USA, UK, UAE and so on. The online resources are created with clear goals in mind for the student, which is why the @Home-Kit by Carolina, builds around the experience of learning at home by bringing in all the benefits of a classroom.

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Making math lessons fun can be quite a challenge for teachers and parents alike. Young learners are full of energy and to get them to concentrate on solving problems, seems like a herculean task….doesn’t it? Some students dislike math because they think it’s a boring subject. Unlike science which is full of discovery and social studies which amuses the young minds to delve further, children feel math is full of problems and finding solutions to it, is just not their thing.

If you are an educator or a parent trying to get your kids to do some math, we can totally relate to your plight. Take a deep breath, cause Mathseeds is here to make math fun!

As the name suggests, Mathseeds is all about math. It is a comprehensive online mathematics programme for children as young as 3 – 9 years of age. Mathseends offers a wide range of child-friendly activities that are enjoyable, covering different math concepts. Fundamental topics such as numbers, shapes, and measurement, are presented in a game like manner to kids.

Have a read on how Mathseeds makes the subject a pleasurable experience:

Create a Dedicated Avatar

Children love cartoons and they very much relate to the character. Most importantly, children learn important lessons through toons, because they find them very interesting. The world of fantasy is full of color, joy, excitement, and kids love the thrill of imaging the character as their best friend. Mathseeds encourages the young learners to create their own personalized ‘Avatar’. Moreover, each math lesson begins with animated characters to make it entertaining and knowledgeable. As children unlock the next level of activity, they are introduced to newer characters. Through the learning journey the 5 characters keep children entertained by dancing, making funny movements, and most importantly motivating the child to learn math skills.

Indulge in Interesting Activities

You will be surprised at how participative your kids are when presented with math challenges in a child-friendly manner. Mathseeds gradually introduces the learners with nine different activities based on the math concept they have learnt. Each activity is presented in a different manner enabling the little ones to use their thought process creatively. The initial stages of the activity focus on numbers, counting, and shape recognition. Later, the child unlocks an advanced level where he is made to measure, add, subtract, multiply, and divide, without missing out on a single moment of joy.

Reading an E-book

Once children are comfortable with their numbers, they are ready to uncover the Mathseeds e-book. What better way to reinforce math concepts than to read it in a story-like form? These books are a delightful treat to understand the language of mathematics. If reading is not their thing, students can use the audio feature to let the ‘bot’ narrate the story to them. Umm….very interesting! How you wish as a parent to have had access to such cool programs during your school days!

Watch the Baby Pet Come out of its Shell

Watching a cute pet hatch from the golden acorn egg is a thrilling experience for children more so when they have worked towards it. Children fall in love with their e-pet and demonstrate responsibility in trying to take care of their personal e-pet. Each pet appears from a different environment such as, the Savannah or even the Artic areas. Integrating geography in math lessons is indeed a cleaver idea, isn’t it?

Rewarding the Child at Every Stage 

The golden acorns are like prized possessions that children are proud of flaunting. Collecting a bunch of them gives children a similar feeling as to winning Golden trophies. Then they can opt to spend those acorns for buying different items for their ‘tree house’. This makes learning math a truly enjoyable experience. Your little munchkins won’t mind putting in some extra effort to ‘earn’ those brownie points and hatching another e-pet.

At the end of all things fun, games, puzzles and learning children are awarded with a printable e-certificate as a reminder of their achievement. Head to our website today https://knowledge-hub.com/mathseeds/ because we are ready to get the games started!

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Assessments are an important part of the educational process. An evaluation of the student’s understanding of the subject reflects whether the educational goals are being met with. Periodical assessments for students help them learn about their own progress and motivate themselves to prepare more passionately for the exams.

The average assessment score of the class is an indication of the educator’s success to deliver lessons effectively. Most importantly ‘assessments’ give answers to important questions. ‘Are students grasping the concepts properly?’, ‘Is there an alternate technique required to the teaching methodology?’, ‘Are students getting It right the first time?’

Assessments are also a revelation for the following reasons:

• Some students may have learning issues which are recognized based on how well or poorly they fared in a series of assessments. The earlier the school gets to know about this, the sooner they will be able to make special arrangements for the student.
• Students require some guidance and feedback for them to steer in the right direction. Assessments give a chance to the teacher to give constructive feedback in details, to the individual student and follow-up on his/her progress.

In recent times, technology is being integrated into the school assessment system to shorten the cumbersome process of examinations and evaluations.

Assessments are an ongoing process and it takes-up much of the class teacher’s time & efforts in preparing papers, keeping the model answers ready, correcting the sheets, and giving feedback to the students. This diverts the teacher’s attention, which could have been otherwise utilized more effectively for preparing teaching aids for students.

Markezy Empowers Assessments with Technology

Markezy is restructuring ‘school assessments’ and taking it to a new level by integrating technology in the grading system. The system is designed with an aim to cut down the workload of educators and make evaluations as simple as possible.

But does it work only for online exams? What happens when you have to evaluate a test paper which is conducted in a ‘pen and paper’ format?

Well, fret not! Markezy brings the best of both worlds together. Students may comfortably appear for their exams in ‘pen and paper’ format and the evaluation will be done digitally. Sounds very convenient, doesn’t it?

Let’s give you a deeper understanding of how Markezy works by following a step-by-step guide.

Step 1- Create and curate questions: Teachers can use the digital platform to create questions in different formats such as; MCQs and essay type questions. Once the questions are ready, the teacher allocates a scoring to each question, based on the importance of the topic.

Step 2- Publish and print assessment papers: The publisher finalizes the questions to be printed in collaboration with the teacher. A random serial order is generated before printing or publishing the assessment, so as to avoid any sort of mischief amongst the students in class. For security reasons, the test paper is predesigned with the student’s ID and photograph for proper allocation. The assessments are ready to be generated and do not need any additional formatting.

Step 3 – Student writes the assessments: Based upon the description of the assessor, the student appears for the exams in the online format or on pen and paper. Enough space is allocated to accommodate the answers, and diagrams on the answer sheet. Confusion is eliminated, as each child appears for the assignment that only he/she has been assigned to and last-minute panic is done away with.

Step 4 – Scan and upload the assessments: The simplest step is to scan the answer sheets and upload them onto the Markezy tool for evaluation. MCQs are automatically graded by the computer and no sort of human intervention is required. The scans are clear and an auto-bifurcation is done by the system such that each Q&A appears on a different page to ease the checking process. A comment section is provided by the system with auto-fill feature allowing the teacher to key-in their feedback more effectively.

Step 5 – Grade students online: Markezy streamlines the grading process and makes it a jiffy job for the educators. The best part is, teachers can evaluate assignments from anywhere, at any time of the day or night. The model answer paper prompts the evaluator to quickly skim through the answers and assign marks accordingly. And of course, the system saves the evaluator from tedious calculations by self-calculating the total score.

Step 6 – Analyze reports: Evaluators get an easy overview of the performance of an individual student and a collective score of the class. One can analyze which Question from amongst the set of questions has been a challenge for students in attempting it correctly by evaluating the scores. The auto-grading aligns the marks in ascending order to determine which student performed well and who could do better in the next exams.

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