Home / News & Publications / Michigan Catholic News / 2009 / Small groups reap success for St. William math program
Small groups reap success for St. William math program
by Kristin Lukowski of The Michigan Catholic
Published August 21, 2009
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Kristin Lukowski | The Michigan Catholic
Kevin Rice, a former fourth-grader, and Logan Whitehead, a former eighth-grader at St. William School in Walled Lake, were recognized for their math abilities last year. |
Walled Lake - Combine six grades, four math tests, and 25 questions. Divide class sizes by two or three. Add in some special attention and ambition.
What do you get? The math program at St. William School, Walled Lake.
With the results of last year's Catholic Math League Competition, a 25-question test given four times a year in grades three through eight, St. William School learned that the school as a whole and two students stood out above most of the competition. Each grade level tested scored in the top 10: eighth grade third, fourth grade sixth, third and sixth grades eighth, fifth grade ninth, and seventh grade 10th.
Other schools in the archdiocese made the top-10 list for Catholic Math League, too: Shrine Catholic Grade School was second in the state for sixth-grade math, and for seventh-grade math Cabrini Middle School, Allen Park and Our Lady of Victory, Northville were fourth and fifth in the state. In pre-algebra, in addition to St. William eighth-graders coming third, Our Lady of Victory took second and Cabrini took the eighth spot.
Archdiocesan high schools also took honors: Marist Academy, Pontiac, was first for Algebra 1, while Cabrini was fifth. Divine Child High School, Dearborn, took the ninth spot for Algebra 2, and Geometry's fourth through seventh spots were filled by De La Salle High School, Warren, Catholic Central High School, Novi, Divine Child and Shrine. Advanced math's fifth spot was also taken by Catholic Central.
Several students at St. William were honored for their individual scores, too: incoming fifth-grader Kevin Rice and Logan Whitehead, who'll be a freshman at Detroit Catholic Central this year, both scored first in the state.
Lee Rice, a sixth-grader last year and Kevin's brother, placed sixth in the state; Sydney Daviskiba, an eighth-grader last year, placed 11th in the state; and Colin Whitehead, also an eighth-grader last year and Logan's brother, placed 10th in the state.
Kevin Rice and Logan Whitehead both received trophies for their accomplishments. Logan, 14, for example, was one of five eighth-graders who was able to get through the algebra I book and into geometry, which will likely give him a head start in high school.
Kevin, 10, who was also first in the state last year, said he enjoys math projects such as making shapes out of pipe cleaners.
Both boys agreed the test was fun. "I just felt really confident," Kevin said.
St. William principal Linda Jackson said when she first came to the school as principal seven years ago, each math class had about 30 students in it. Teachers split classes in two, and some into three, based on their abilities, to create a curriculum more catered to the group of students' learning pace. Teachers can then spend more time on a difficult topic, which ensures the students learn it and aren't left behind, while accelerating the students who find math easy.
The school has a dedicated advanced math teacher, in addition to classroom teachers, and Jackson herself teaches three math classes in order to keep them small. "It's like running a three-ring circus, as a teacher, if you're teaching two things at different times," she said. "You've got to be able to do it."
Her sixth-graders last year were already a third of the way through the eighth-grade book by the end of the year, she said. "We're not going to hold the kids back," she said. "We just keep flying."
This fall, the classes will pick up where they left off. Advanced classes usually have to slow down a bit when they reach algebra, Jackson said, which takes what she called an "intense year," before students start geometry.
So far, the small-group model is doing well: Logan is one example of a student entering honors math, and others have skipped a level. "Math and reading are the two core subjects that everything else is built upon," she said, and if students can't learn those subjects, they'll likely have problems with the rest of their education.
"I really think the biggest thing kids gain is confidence in being a successful learners, and teachers become more confident they can reach the students in front of them," she said. "That's why we targeted those two subjects."
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