World Math Day 2010
What it is: Hooray!! It is World Math Day time! This year World Math Day will be held on March 3, 2010. For those of you who are unfamiliar with World Math Day, it is a day when students from around the world compete in an online environment in live games of mental arithmetic. Each game lasts for 60 seconds and students can play as many as 500 games, earning points for every correct answer. The students who answer the most questions show up in the Hall of Fame. This is an absolutely free event to take part in. Students can train for World Math Day every day leading up to March 3rd by participating in arithmetic competition. For those of you home school readers, World Math Day is also open and free to you! The competition is designed for students 5-18 years old. This year has a little bit of a new format (the change is fantastic!) with multi-levels for all groups. Teachers, parents and media are also invited to participate for the first time. Last year 2 million students from 204 countries participated and correctly answered more than 4 million questions!!
How to integrate World Math Day into the classroom: World Math Day is a fun competition to involve your students in. It helps build mental arithmetic and numeracy. Students from around the world compete in this competition to find out which country has the top mathematicians. Students have a great time working to get their country to the top (nothing like a little National pride!). My students beg to be involved in World Math Day each year. We spend extra time in the computer lab and on classroom computers preparing for the day. Students answer mental math questions appropriate to their age level. This is a phenomenal way to get some fact practice in!
We make a big deal out of World Math Day and let students have an extended math period to compete on March 3rd. You could use World Math Day as a Math Olympics for your class and have and opening and closing ceremony for your class, school, or representing your country.
Tie World Math Day into your social studies curriculum. As students compete against other students from around the world, the other student is represented by a flag. My students are always very curious to learn more about the other countries and cultures represented. It would also be fun to start a map in Google Earth where you put place markers on the countries that students have competed with.
The platform is open, register your students and start training today!
Tips: If you would like to find out more about past World Math Day competitions check out my posts 2009 here and 2008 here. There are rumors of a World Math Day iPod App coming soon, check back with the official site for more information.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using World Math Day in your classroom.