Notre Dame combats mental math struggles with new web-based app
SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Mental math is part of the fundamentals for mathematical comprehension. Although it is very prevalent in schools, many students still struggle with it.
Notre Dame’s Institute for Educational Initiatives launched a free math app directed towards grades three through twelve to combat this issue.
The app is called "Number Sense" and is a web-based app that can be used on any browser. This app can assess students' mental math skills and even compare their scores to students nationally.
The app provides a mental math test that lasts about ten minutes and students are not supposed to use any paper or pen while completing the assessment.
Patrick Kirkland, Assistant Professor for the Institute for Educational Initiatives, said, “Number Sense is something that's important in math education, and we know it's helpful for kids in the math classroom, but also in their future math learning. And it's their understanding of both numbers, things like whole numbers, fractions, decimals, as well as operations, addition and subtraction, multiplication and division, and how those work together.”
The app has been in the works for around six years, but the full open access version was released just two weeks ago. The app can be used by parents, students, and teachers. So far, the app has reached schools in the community as well as 35 other states.
Kirkland says, "We've heard from a number of teachers and parents just how different it felt for their students to take a test without paper and pencil, and how it could reveal for them some differences between what they might see in traditional assessments and what they see here.”
According to a study released by the National Library of Medicine for teachers, assessments at the beginning or end of the school year are often insufficient in identifying struggling students at an early stage.
The mental math side of mathematics is especially difficult to know a student's understanding early on.
Kirkland explains, “We do a lot of paper and pencil assessments in math, things like I-Learn, NWA, i-Ready, but it's much harder to assess the mental math side.”