Hawthorne Elementary’s third grade Extended Learning math students participated in the national Noetic Learning Math Contest (NLMC) in November along with over 27,000 students from across the country.
“Students are not just doing calculations, they must create the math sentences themselves in order to solve these complex multi-step problems,” Diane Berner, Keokuk Community School District TAG program coordinator and kindergarten through third grade gifted education teacher, said. “It introduces a variety of math concepts including algebra and logic.”
Hawthorne participant Preston Varner was the team winner and received a National Honor Roll medal for scoring in the top 10% nationally. Eric Eisenbach and Justyn Ketterer, also from Hawthorne, scored in the top 50% nationally and received a National Honorable Mention award. Also, Hawthorne’s Spencer Salsberry participated and scored just shy of an honorable mention.
The NLMC is a semiannual problem-solving contest for elementary and middle school students. During the contest, students have 45 minutes to solve 20 creative problems independently without a calculator.
Noetic Learning states, “We believe that problem-solving helps students to become better mathematicians, better thinkers, therefore better equipped for advanced STEM learning. The goal of our contest is to develop students’ problem-solving skills, to encourage their interest in math, and to inspire them to excel in math.”
For more information on the contest, go to noetic-learning.com/mathcontest/.
PHOTO CAPTION: Preston Varner, left, Eric Eisenbach, Justyn Ketterer and Spencer Salsberry participated in the Noetic Learning Math Contest for Hawthorne Elementary School in Keokuk, Iowa.
