Coverage Samples at PLMR Marketing

SplashLearn –– St. Louis

Many of us grew up in a school environment where our grasp of a mathematics concept was often judged by who could answer a question first, or how quickly our hands would shoot up when asked for the answer to a set problem.

Our more confident peers would happily throw their hands in the air ready to answer. However, for a lot of us, the battle taking place in our minds was, “Should I attempt to answer this and risk getting it wrong in front of everyone, or should I simply let the ‘confident children’ answer like they always do?”

What this quick-fire questioning fails to identify—beyond who is more confident—is which students have a deep understanding of the math skills needed to calculate the answer. This approach is often very counterproductive, succeeding only in building up a strong sense of ‘math anxiety’ in many children.

In a 2016 interview, Professor Doug Clements explained that rote practice does not work for most students as it misunderstands the nature of knowing addition and subtraction facts and other concepts. The ability that we have as adults to “just know” that 6+5=11 is a result of all the mathematical relationships that have formed in our lives.

Getting children to memorize “the basics” robs them of building these relationships which are integral to understanding mathematical concepts. It also posits a false relationship between mathematical intelligence and fact recall—including the idea that having poor fact recall equates to “not being a math person.”

Math anxiety is a crippling condition that begins in early elementary school and rarely disappears. It’s defined as feelings of tension and anxiety that interfere with the manipulation of numbers and the solving of mathematical problems in a wide variety of ordinary life and academic situations (Tobias, S., 1993).

In short, math is seen by many as the dreaded subject. Parents often compound this issue by giving comfort to their child who is doing their math homework, with comments such as “Oh poor you having to do math homework. When I was a child I hated doing that too.”

It’s no wonder—with pop quizzes and grades assigning each child a numerical value—that math has become an unengaging, anxiety-inducing experience for students of every age.

The core of education, of learning something you didn’t know before, or practicing a skill to the point that you can do it in your sleep, should be fun. That’s what I wanted to address with my students—the outcome has been significant.

How competition can help

I have also employed the benefit of competition but, of course, this has to be managed carefully to ensure it adds to each child’s excitement—rather than making them feel a failure. Each year, SplashLearn ends in a national ‘SpringBoard’ competition. The 10-week contest is run in 30,000 classrooms across the US.

The questions are mapped to each child’s ability, so they are all competing based on the number of questions answered, not the level of question complexity. My students loved it.

The only issue was that my students were competing at a disadvantage. We are based in a low-income area, and few have access to digital devices at home.

I was watching the Springboard competition leaderboard, seeing other classes getting points overnight and over the weekend. However, this just motivated my students to spend even more time in class playing the fun math-based games.

Incredibly this year, my fifth-grade classroom placed second nationally. Every year the competition offers $20,000 in cash and gifts. For winning second place, we received an $800 gift card for Amazon; money that is going right back into the children’s education. I bought them some math books and also celebrated the children’s triumph with a well-deserved pizza party!

SpringBoard has been the highlight of this challenging year for my class and allowed us to reinforce the three principles that we hold dear—hard work, dedication, and commitment to excellence. It allowed us to set, reset, meet, and exceed the goals throughout the competition.

Aside from the money, the students; grasp of math is its own end-of-the-year prize. The kids were able to pick up the material more quickly and with greater retention: I’m sure that every kid has undergone growth.

But what is most important is that they’ve learned to love math!

Published in: https://districtadministration.com/how-a-st-louis-school-is-winning-the-battle-against-math-anxiety/

Percussion Play –– Oil City

In 1890, Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie donated $44,000 to build the Oil City Library. That's equal to approximately $1.24 million today. This gift meant that like so many other communities across America, the residents of Oil City would have guaranteed free access to knowledge, learning, and ideas when they walked through the doors of their brand-new library.

That same building is still in use today, however, a further gift has allowed for a very significant and appealing change to be made to the entrance of this well-loved library that patrons so depend on.

When, in 2020, PMC Bank chose to move its business offices elsewhere, they left a parting gift that funded the construction of a music garden outside the city’s library. The choice may seem at odds with a library’s purpose: to lend books, supply information, and provide a quiet place to study or read. But, like many libraries across the country, the Oil City Library has worked hard to adapt to changing times.

Keen to develop and diversify the library's services, director Dan Flaherty points to a renewed energy in the last five to ten years. “We’ve stopped wasting our breath on what once was, and focused instead on what we have and what we could be.”

He’s overseen a host of programming to attract more people to the library and remind everyone it’s no longer just about books. Dan has said: “We check out fishing poles and tackle boxes, STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) kits, and even stud finder tools, we have take-and-make activities and video games with the latest technology headsets. Added to all this, we host a local film festival and have regular concerts in the library.”

In an age where information can be summoned at the tap of a phone, the value of the Oil City library has shifted to its status as a community gathering space, and this is where Dan saw the value of a music garden in the front courtyard.

“When we focused on what we have and what we could be, it’s the outdoor natural amenities: we have great woods, we have amazing waterways, hiking, canoeing, kayaking, camping, a good local community feel that has helped us rebound and rediscover what we are.”

The new music garden comprises a collection of Percussion Play outdoor musical instruments: a Rainbow Cavatina and Music Book, Cherub, Harmony, Colossus Chimes, and three different types of drum; Cajons, a pair of Tumbadoras, and a large Babel Drum (engraved with the PMC logo).

Ever since the garden’s construction by supplier Recreation Resource USA, Flaherty is always hearing music: “We think church is in session, because we hear this faint lullaby in the distance.”

Many of the instruments are tuned to easy-to-play pentatonic scales that make them ideal for the outdoor space: with people inside the library quietly engaged in their activities, the music garden needed to produce a calming beautiful sound.

Supplier Recreation Resource USA and Percussion Play provided the library with a 3D projection of how the garden would look with the instruments in place: a floral nook in the library’s front yard designed to provide wheelchair accessibility. Constructed near a statue of a girl dipping her toe in a lake, today it looks like she’s dancing to the music.

“It’s been amazing”, Flaherty said. Built between the YMCA and a local coffee shop, the garden attracts families, dog walkers, and people on their way to the library or anywhere else. “This spring we’ve had two second-grade classes come to get their library cards. After that, we let them play with the instruments.”

Places like Oil City especially understand the importance of community and local gathering spaces. Few places are more crucial than the library: “Libraries are about making connections: connect to information, connect to each other, and connect to the local community.” It is a wonderful thing to watch these spaces evolve to meet the community’s needs, whether that is by hosting concerts, renting out new technologies, or simply providing a place where families can come and make music.

Source: https://www.percussionplay.com/oil-city-library/

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