Earlier this year, an article featuring long-time McConnell grantee JUMP Math and its founder, John Mighton, was published in The Globe and Mail.
JUMP Math, a program to help youth think mathematically, to date has had outstanding results. This Globe and Mail article explores the possibility of JUMP Math’s successful integration into regular classrooms and offers an anecdote about one classroom that has already adopted JUMP Math teaching methods:
“’There is a perception that JUMP is only for weaker students and that it will hold faster kids back,’ Mr. Mighton says. This Grade 6 class at the private Mabin school in Toronto shows how JUMP can work for all children, he says.
“The teacher, Mary Jane Moreau, started using JUMP last year, when the children were in Grade 5. Beforehand, she gave the students a standardized math-computation test: Their marks ranged from the 37th to the 75th percentile. After a year of JUMP, she says, all but one were in the 91st-to-the-99th percentile.
“’It is like they are a gifted class,’ she says. ‘But they aren’t a gifted class.’
“One thing that’s obvious to an observer is that these kids now love math. Even the shyest children volunteer answers. Some seem giddy.”
Read the entire article by Anne McIlroy here.