We spoke to Morgan Lamb, a maths educator who is using NumberDrop to help students sharpen their skills.
I’m a maths intervention coordinator who teaches all abilities of secondary school students, aged 11-18.
A group of Year 8 students were complaining that maths was “dull” and “boring”. Having spent a few weeks playing NumberDrop myself, I thought that introducing the app to the children might challenge them in a new way. I opened the app and showed them the tutorial. Once they were familiar with the rules, we started attempting the harder questions with mini-whiteboards, so numbers could be erased and moved around without much hassle.
The students enjoyed how the levels got harder and harder. The more difficult a question, the greater the triumph felt by the student when he or she answered it correctly.
The students have benefited from NumberDrop a variety of ways. Firstly, it improves their knowledge of the basic functions, and helps them with times tables, division and sums. Secondly, the puzzling nature of the app allowed the students to work and think logically, and finishing a difficult puzzle meant using problem-solving skills they might not necessarily have used with standard maths questions. Using NumberDrop levels as a team task, or an individual race to the answer, has shown team-building skills and improved confidence and all-around maths knowledge.
Some students have quite enjoyed NumberDrop and I have seen examples of the children taking their maths work more seriously, so as to be able to compete more competently when they next play NumberDrop.
Click here to download NumberDrop on your Android or iOS device