Submitted by:
Jocelyn Beehler
(on behalf of CBFCS)
Community Bible Fellowship Christian School students Gr.1-8 participated in an online math competition that was open to all schools in the province.
The contest involved students answering math questions through an online game called “Sumdog.” 13 schools participated in the 1-week competition. During the contest 340 students across the province correctly answered over 375,000 math questions. CBFCS had 28 students that participated and correctly answered almost 70,000 questions. In order to qualify and earn points a school had to have at least 15 students participate. The average correct answers per student in each school contributed to the overall scores of the school. CBFCS finished the week with 2,485 points and the nearest competitor was Ecole Bannatyne School with 1,364. Thanks to the hard work of our students the school has won a permanent site license for Yenka Mathematics – an online educational math website ($750 value).
Students also competed against each other individually and there was recognition for the top 10 students overall. CBFCS had 4 students in the top 10 and would like to congratulate Sam Girgis (Gr.6), Jonathan Friesen (Gr.6) , Reid Scouten (Gr.7), and Jadzea Scales (Gr.6) for their diligent efforts. All our students worked hard answering questions during class, at recess, after school and over a weekend.
From an educational standpoint this was an awesome way to get our students to practice their math facts in a fun way. I don’t think that it would have been possible to get the students to practice over 70,000 questions in a week during regular math class… at least not with an enthusiastic attitude. A nice feature of this free online math game is that it starts off asking the students very simple questions. As students answer questions correctly it automatically increases the difficulty until they start getting a few wrong and then it decreases the difficulty until it matches the level they are at. This made it where our Gr. 1 students could be just as successful as our Gr. 8 students and every student could practice at a level that was achievable.
The Sumdog website had many game options (not just one). As students were answering questions they were also doing a fun task. I think this kept them interested. One may think that the students could just click on anything to get an answer and that it wouldn’t really show what they knew but, the students knew that only correct answers counted in the challenge. This prevented students from rushing through carelessly. We introduced the challenge to the students and gave them a few extra math classes through the week. Their competitive attitudes shone through immediately. They begged to play during any available minute. Here are some of the student’s responses when asked about the game:
“It was so much fun, I didn’t even realize it was math work!”
(Corbin Legebokoff – Gr.2)
“I needed help to login but my favorite game was the “Invasion”
(Ruben LeRoux – Gr.1)
“I am fairly competitive and wanted to win so I called my classmates on the weekend to get them to play.”
(Jonathan Friesen – Gr.6)
“My favorite game was called “Junk Pile.” It was fun to do math on the computer and have a change from regular class.
(Flint Switzer – Gr.7)
“I was so excited when I realized we had a chance to win that I encouraged my classmates to play after school.”
(Dylan Liske – Gr.8)
The Sumdog website is available to the students to play for free regardless of the completion. Students can log in as a guest and then play. For educators and parents this is an awesome website that is educational, safe and fun and can be found at www.sumdog.com. Thanks again to our students for working so hard and learning your math facts. Thanks to the teachers for being flexible with our math classes and to parents for letting your children play this online game at home.