Students came in 20th place out of 13,000 schools nationwide during April IXL challenge
Pierce Downer second grader Grace likes fractions. Adding fractions, subtracting fractions – it all interests her. She sometimes even wakes up at 6 a.m. to practice fractions and other problems using IXL, an educational app that challenges students with adaptive and personalized math and reading questions.
“IXL makes me like math and reading even more,” Grace said.
And last month, Grace and her classmates joined a nationwide IXL challenge. As a class, they answered 81,879 questions, coming in 20th place out of 13,000 classrooms!
“You can imagine our excitement when we found out!” said Pierce Downer second grade teacher Jamie Lindberg. “You could walk in our classroom during April, and hear words of encouragement, praise and teamwork from the students' conversations! They did this! Students would tell me how they set up playdates just to practice IXL with their friends, setting alarms to wake up early and squeeze in a few more questions before school, and begging me to stay in at recess to answer just a couple more questions! The students also built each other up, and helped one another set goals for at home practice. They inspired me!”
When asked what Ms. Lindberg’s second graders enjoyed most about IXL, they had the following to say:
Annie: I’ve gone on IXL playdates with friends. We use our iPads to solve different IXL challenges together!
Dylan: My favorite part about IXL is practicing telling time. (Ms. Lindberg added that Dylan was working on fourth grade time skills! IXL adapts to the student’s current level to provide challenging material.)
Victoria: IXL lets me work with friends; we like to solve problems together.
Ethan: It makes me like ELA even more! It’s fun to do word jumbles and phonics.
Cassidy: I like to talk through the different IXL problems with my sister. I like spending this time together with her.
Aamir: It was fun to learn about the different seasons on IXL.
Malcolm: I work on my math skills with IXL. We can win prizes in our class; I really like that.
Chloe: Ms. Lindberg has a chart that shows our IXL progress and the week’s top IXLers. Each week’s top IXLer gets an ‘orange paw’ ticket, which gets entered into a quarterly raffle to win a prize. This really motivates me! (Ms. Lindberg added that Chloe is the class’s top IXLer!) Great work, Ms. Lindberg’s second graders!!