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Rebecca Stucki Awarded Grant to Enhance Math Instruction
posted by: Cindy Omlin | April 18, 2016, 10:20 PM   

brenda miller rebecca stucki april 2016Ms. Stucki’s award was presented to her by Brenda Miller, NWPE regional director, at a school staff meeting.  The grant will be used to purchase materials that will be used to build students' understanding and flexibility of base ten concepts, specifically, Digi-Blocks, which are manipulatives that assist students from preschool through fourth grade in developing place-value concepts.

The value of manipulatives was brought home to her through her mathematical endorsement classes where she had had the opportunity to study and research children's development and understanding of place value.  “Throughout this research I have been reminded of the importance of children (students) having ample opportunity to use manipulatives to build their understanding of the complex concepts required for full place value understanding.  In short, "It is crucial for them to actually manipulate objects by grouping them to understand the meaning of place value."

She especially likes Digi-Blocks which allow and require students to recognize a unit of one, and then build a unit of 10 with ten ones.  "In reverse fashion, students can decompose their unit of 10 by 'breaking' the unit and accessing the ten ones (just as we do with the numeric algorithms when we fully understand what we are doing."

Ms. Stucki believes that the professionalism of teaching as a career can be raised by encouraging or even expecting that teachers participate in increasing their own learning of their practice, the content(s) in which they aspire to teach and all that it entails to be a highly effective teacher.  “One of the most respected professions, according to InsiderMonkey.com, is a college professor.  These academicians earn their respect through years of study, research and published works.  Teachers, both elementary and secondary should seek out and acquire similar opportunities . . .  As teachers, we expect our students to learn.  Therefore we must be their greatest examples of lifelong learners.”

Congratulations again to Ms. Stucki!  We appreciate your dedication to raising your professionalism and the academic achievement of your students!

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