The Prentice School is pleased to be a one-year grant recipient from the MIND Institute to implement ST Math, a spatial temporal math product family. The program provides computer courseware, with an optional music curriculum, for enabling K-8 grade students at all ability levels to master math concepts, procedures, and problem solving skills aligned to state standards.

 

Research discovered that spatial temporal computer lessons incorporating math principals might help students learn mathematics and develop problem solving skills. ST Math’s visual learning strategy immediately helps English language learners and other students who have struggled to learn with traditional materials and methods. The games are divided into two types: Spatial Temporal and Lan-guage Integration. They are visually intriguing and fun to play.

 

MIND Institute research indicates that music training enhances spatial temporal abilities; there is a causal effect of music on spatial temporal reasoning. The benefits of music to mathematics are also directly apparent. Music has a mathe-matical architecture. As students learn music, they also learn to recognize patterns and symmetries, and to understand and use concepts or fractions.

 

The MIND Institute’s music curriculum is uniquely designed to enhance students’ spatial temporal reasoning used by the math games to illustrate and teach math principles.

 

The Prentice School is privileged to use ST Math+Music program, and selected teachers have been trained on how to utilize it. Through the generosity of a donor, the school received 17 keyboards to start the music component. Prentice implemented this program early in 2008 in grades 10-6 with the music component and grades 3-6 with the computer-based program. The sixth graders included are those experiencing the most difficulty with math concepts.

 

Student performance results are submitted to the MIND Institute for analysis, and the Institute provides the school with a weekly report on the students’ progress. Within a very short period of time, there is already evidence that the program, indeed, helps students learn math principles.