Nicholson Elementary School is planning to bring fun to learning math during a student-parent event on Thursday.
A group of Nicholson teachers banded together to plan the Night of Math Fun for All event after some of the teachers attended a two-week program at Mississippi State University last summer, Nicholson Elementary teacher Deidra Thompson said.
The program, called ImPACT or Improving Parents as Communication Teachers, helped teachers dig deep into the Common Core Standards of math, Thompson said.
The program aims to help teachers communicate with parents so they can better understand the changes being made, especially in the math curriculum, she said.
On Thursday, students and parents are invited to play games and participate in activities that incorporate some of the math lessons students learn in school, Thompson said.
Showing parents how their kids are taught will hopefully help parents while their children are doing homework, she said.
Oftentimes, students come home with worksheets with problems that parents say they don’t know how to solve, Thompson said.
Over the years, math standards have changed, as well as teaching methods.
“It’s not just paper and pencil,” Thompson said.
Parents are eager to see what they can do at home with their students,” she said.
It’s also important for the students to realize the importance of mastering these skills.
“We want kids to know that math is something that they will use every day for the rest of their lives,” Thompson said. “This is a life skill, they need to see this can be fun.”
The school is hoping to make it an annual event and encourage students and their families to attend.
This year, the classroom with the most students in attendance will win a prize, she said.
The same group of Nicholson teachers will meet again this month with a larger group of teachers from the ImPACT program, Thompson said.
There, they will hear presentations from NASA employees about how to incorporate the organization’s science into classrooms, she said. The event is for Nicholson students and their families only.
The event will be held in the multipurpose building at the school from 5 to 6 p.m.