The Beauty of Math

Although I don't necessarily enjoy math, I've been interested in a certain math program called Apangea Learning [A-pan-jee-uhh]. It's a website that teaches the curriculum of math. You can choose a background, a little avatar to help you when you're stumped on a question, and a lesson that informs you on what you're about to learn before the section, or "thread," even begins. I try my best to go on every night.

To create an account, it takes a teacher or a staff member at school. The username and password is chosen for you. Like mine, the usernames usually include a lot of numbers after the letters, so it could take some memorization to finally get it glued to your head.

Apangea is easy to use. The three zones in a thread are the Practice Zone, the Quiz Zone, and the Story Problem Zone. The Practice Zone is the simplest of the three. It asks you a question that is related to the thread's focus, it gives you four choices, and if you get the wrong one, you are able to guess again until you receive the right answer. The sooner you guess the right answer, though, the more points you earn. These points can be used to buy things, like an iTunes Gift Card, a CD, and you can even donate your points that then turn into real money, and the money is donated to the charity of your choice.

The Quiz Zone is the most difficult of the three zones. It is a quiz that shows whether you worked hard on the thread or not. Your first guess is your final answer, so if you get it wrong, you receive no points. If you get the correct answer, though, you receive ten points.

The Story Problem Zone contains a certain number of steps. You have to read the problem, find the value, unit, and label for each step, make a chart, build the problem, and at the end, write a short summary about the final answer. This is the longest zone of the three. It usually takes a while to finally get the correct value, unit, and label. It can get a little frustrating for me... :)

Apangea is popular at my elementary school. All the classes in the USA compete to see who can be the #1 class in all of Apangea Math. This March, a 6th grade class at my school won. They earned the most points. The rewards were $80 in prizes, a backpack, a t-shirt, and a huge trophy. The person who was most committed and earned the most points got a Nintendo Wii, and our winner was Arthur from the same class that won the whole thing. The First Lady of Idaho was at the celebration assembly, the superintendent of the schools in all of Idaho as well. The speeches were very well-written, and I never knew I'd have to clap so much. I enjoyed the hour-long assembly.

Even though I'll be at a different school next year, (tomorrow is my last day at my awesome elementary school, sadly) I hope my grade -- 5th grade -- can win it for the 6th grade all over again. GO TIMBERWOLVES! :)

♥ Abigail ♥