How Stéphane Normandeau jumped a level using Netmath.
Stéphane is 15 years old. He wants to be a businessman, accountant, or engineer, and he’s sure to achieve that dream. In grade 8, he decided to speed things up a bit and pass the grade 9 exam! To do this, he used Netmath.
Last October, our Director of Business Development, Luc Goudreault, was in Manitoba to provide Netmath training to teachers in the Franco-Manitoban School Division (DSFM). At the end of the workshop, he was approached by the principal of the Centre scolaire Léo-Rémillard and his son Stéphane. They told him that Stéphane had successfully completed the grade 9 year-end evaluation using only Netmath to do so. Very impressed with his achievement, we wanted to know more about how this student managed to do this and share his story with you.
In class, his teacher uses Netmath as part of the lessons to get the students to practice math. Stéphane quickly finished the activities for his grade. Too quickly. So well that he started to get bored. For him, sitting idly by was out of the question: on his own initiative, he started the modules intended for students in grade 9. “I wanted more challenges,” he told us.
In addition to being a gifted student who is very comfortable with mathematics, Stéphane is also an athlete. So, he set himself a goal: pass the grade 9 evaluation. And just like all good athletes who like a challenge, he prepared a daily training schedule to be able to pass the exam, which was in 3 months, with flying colours! Once he had completed the work assigned by his teacher, he set off to tackle the grade 9 activities one after another, in class and then at home.
Luc Goudreault from Netmath meeting Stéphane Normandeau
Stéphane did not ask for help from anyone. “If I didn’t understand something, I looked at how to do it by clicking on the solution or displaying an example. It’s very well explained.” On Netmath, when a student makes an error, they can access a detailed solution that explains the process to find the correct answer. They can also get help by displaying an example. Then, they can retry the activity with new information, as many times as necessary. “If I didn’t understand a term or a concept, I could also refer to the Netmath glossary.”
Rigorously following his daily training, Stéphane completed all of the grade 9 modules and earned all of the stars. He took and passed the end-of-year exam. His score? 95/100.
As teachers, we are faced with students whose abilities can vary widely. Some of them go quickly, while others need more time. The challenge is to organize the lessons to strike a balance without slowing down the whole class or, on the other hand, leaving some students behind. We wanted to account for this challenge with the activity assignments on Netmath. We designed it so that a teacher could send exercises at their choice of level (for example, sending a lower-level exercise to review a concept) to one or several students individually. This function makes it possible to support teachers as they implement differentiated teaching. It takes into account each student’s difficulties without requiring more work, because several of our tools (examples, detailed solutions, glossary, voice readout, etc.) are there to assist students with their understanding. This allows them to progress at their own pace, more independently. Stéphane understood this and made the most of it.
Now in grade 10, Stéphane no longer uses Netmath everyday, but he doesn’t hesitate to go back to it as needed to work on some grade 11 activities. We wish him great success in his future projects!
