NKyTribune staff
A group of fifth graders from Longbranch Elementary School in Boone County are a regional prize winner in the DreamBox Learning Fall Math Challenge.
The students from Meredith Larison’s class are one of just 12 regional winners chosen from across the United States and Canada.
Larison
DreamBox Learning was founded in 2006 in Bellevue, Washington. The company’s Intelligent Adaptive learning platform has won more than 40 top education and technology industry awards and is in use in all 50 states and throughout Canada.
The DreamBox Learning Math difference is the combination of a rigorous K-8 math curriculum and a motivating learning environment that work seamlessly with the Intelligent Adaptive technology, which provides feedback in the moment of learning and over time.
The annual challenge encourages participating classrooms to spend more time on math education, allowing students to celebrate their love of math and demonstrate a growing fluency in the subject. To be named regional or grand prize winners, classrooms competed to complete the greatest number of standards-aligned lessons on the DreamBox platform.
Students in participating classrooms completed a total of 2,091,807 DreamBox Learning math lessons in three weeks, which is a record number for the competition.
“The results of this math challenge were truly extraordinary,” said Jason Bedford, senior vice president of client engagement and success at DreamBox Learning. “Students found extra time to complete these lessons by using DreamBox at home and opting to spend indoor recess doing DreamBox lessons on rainy days, among other things. It’s especially exciting because we know the real impact that more time on DreamBox can have on math learning for early elementary students.”
DreamBox’s technology and curriculum are informed by decades of research about children’s natural development and growth in mathematical reasoning. The program, long considered a favorite among students and teachers, received national attention over the past year when a Center for Education Policy Research (CEPR) at Harvard University study, DreamBox Learning Achievement Growth, showed students who spent more time on DreamBox saw larger gains in achievement.
“All children have brilliance. It’s up to us as learning guardians to activate learning and unleash that brilliance,” said Jessie Woolley-Wilson, president and CEO of DreamBox Learning. “We are excited to see that through the DreamBox Learning Challenge, students are developing a love for math and unlocking their own learning potential.”
Teachers competing in the math challenge said that DreamBox helped students stay motivated by adapting to each learner’s individual needs.
“DreamBox does a great job providing a variety of representations and models that build on the teacher directed work and help students think about numbers and operations,” said Robbie Torney, teacher of a DreamBox Learning Fall Math Challenge grand prize winning class. “It was great to see students taking the initiative to learn more and complete more lessons as their interest in math developed during the DreamBox Math Challenge.”
Regional winners completed the highest number of lessons in their region and will receive a math challenge prize pack that includes a T-shirt, bracelet and bag as well as a gift card for the teacher’s classroom fund.
The two grand prize winners, Lighthouse Community Charter Lodestar Campus in California and Abner Creek Academy in South Carolina, completed the highest number of lessons in the country.
Grand prize winners receive regional prizes in addition to a virtual meet-and-greet with DreamBox creators and a trip for the teacher to attend the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM).
Preparing math contests for students is a good idea. I think students need more tests to find out what is the level they are at in order to get an appropriate learning plan. Keep improving in studying is the student’s mission, so my son would take lots of time to get different contests, especially Math from Beestar to practice, also to check himself what he needs to improve.