Hamilton Avenue Fifth Graders Receive Grant for Reflex Math Program

The fifth grade team at Hamilton Avenue School has received a grant from ExploreLearning for free subscriptions to Reflex Math for the upcoming school year. The grant program will allow the 5th grade students to become more proficient in their basic facts. According to one of the teachers, Cathy Byrne, “We applied for this grant because we recognized that basic fact fluency was an area of weakness for our students.  We hope that the time it takes to solve multiplication and division problems will be greatly reduced, allowing the students to focus their time and energy on more complex math problems.  Natural recall of facts will make it easier to not only solve multiplication and division problems but also fractions, mixed numbers and word problems.”  The teachers hope Reflex will help students of all ability levels to develop fluency with their basic facts in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

“I love the adaptivity and individualization of Reflex which continuously monitors each student's performance so that it focuses on the individual needs of every child,” states Darlene Angotto, one of the fifth grade teachers using the program.  Tina Mediate adds, “We are able to easily monitor and support each student’s progress through a variety of individual and class reports. Best of all, Reflex is game-based and highly motivational so students enjoy the learning process. “

Students are able to log on two to three times a week at school and as many time as they wish at home.  Keely Rodriquez has used the program every day since it was introduced to her class on September 13.  She has solved over 5,000 facts and gain fluency in 75 new facts since starting the programs.  Wyatt Radzin has already achieved 100% fluency on her multiplication and division facts 0-10 and is now working on facts to 12.  In the two weeks since they started using the program, Mrs. Byrne’s class has solved over 34,000 facts.