Help Revolutionize Education For Peruvian Children

Sonia is a 5th grade student at the I.E. 101148 - La Zanja school in Santa Cruz, Cajamarca (in the mountains of Perú). In math class, her teacher Camila (Enseña Peru’s Fellow) identified that Sonia still could not work with the decimal system and didn't correctly locate numbers on the positional board. In addition to this, Sonia stopped sending her math homework and doing the course activities. With concern and a desire to understand what was happening, her teacher used one of her learning sessions to talk in private. The response she received was unexpected: Sonia not only told her that she was the most understanding teacher she  ever had, but also suggested that they can do all the pending tasks and activities together at that moment. Camila, her teacher responded with great emotion, and they started the challenge.

After that talk, Sonia worked with a renewed attitude, with conviction and commitment to catch up the challenge of mathematics. Camila investigated how she could better handle the issue and work with Sonia, so they began to work with concrete material and, step by step, with great adaptability, they arrived at the session in which they worked with beans. They started from the beginning: learning what a unit is, to group, 2 by 2, then 3 by 3. Because Sonia likes to read Greek myths, her teacher suggested that they could imagine that beans were Greek goddesses and that they would go to a party in groups and so on, by grouping beans and having fun, they were learning the decimal system.

It was significant learning for Sonia, as she was able to develop her skills in mathematics taking into account one of the activities that she likes the most: reading Greek myths.