Helping Children Master Basic Math Concepts
By Inkyung Jung
The mathematics curriculum of Enuma School builds on the success of Todo Math, Enuma’s signature product that has been downloaded over 8 million times and has been the #1 education app in its category in over twenty countries. In addition to these downloads, Todo Math is currently used in 3,000+ classrooms across the United States from PreK to second grade. We also took the lessons we learned from creating Kitkit School, a co-winner of the Global Learning XPRIZE, to create a new learning application that provides children the opportunity for self-directed learning through daily lesson plans.
Early elementary age is when students first form their basic understanding of math. Enuma School provides videos and mini-games consisting of activities that help reinforce the math concepts children need to know as they start studying mathematics, such as number sense, basic operations, and shapes.
In terms of number sense, students engage in activities such as counting to ten, writing numbers, and understanding concepts of two-digit and three-digit numbers. Students count and express the number of items, learn about number sequence and magnitude by both counting in order and skip-counting, as well as learning about the concept of place value in two-digit and higher numbers.
For basic operations, students learn the concepts of addition and subtraction and practice them with the help of images of objects. Adding and subtracting single-digit numbers, addition and subtraction within 100 with regrouping, and solving word problems are also included. In addition, students learn the concept of multiplying and solving simple multiplication problems.
As for shapes, connections are made between shapes and the appearance of everyday items so that students easily understand the characteristics of specific shapes. Students also learn the names of basic two-dimensional and three-dimensional shapes, how to categorize them and how to recognize their attributes.
In addition, students learn everyday skills such as reading a clock, and experience activities that increase their mathematical reasoning abilities such as patterns and matrices.
Enuma School is built on self-directed learning. The app provides a sense of accomplishment when answering correctly, which helps further a student’s desire to learn and outweighs the frustration that comes from getting an answer wrong. Enuma School’s mini-games utilize a game format designed to allow students to experience success through trial and error.
Math is a subject with hierarchical contents. If the content learned previously is not understood well, the following lessons will be difficult to understand. Enuma School’s math assessment system is therefore designed to make sure that lessons not fully learned are not skipped over. Assessments are divided into conceptual units so that they can determine exactly what students don’t understand and provide them an opportunity to review that content.
We hope the children of Indonesia will be able to take an interest in mathematics and successfully master all its basic concepts by using Enuma School’s math program.
Mathematics in Bahasa Indonesia is one of three learning modules in Enuma School that also includes Bahasa Indonesia and English as a Second Language. Enuma School is currently being tested in Indonesia as Sekolah Enuma Indonesia. Continue to follow our adventures to learn more about Enuma School.
Inkyung Jung works as Mathematics Curriculum Designer for Enuma School Indonesia. inkyung@enuma.com
