Math storytelling to encourage reading, math appreciation in public schools

MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Education (DepEd) will use “math storytelling” to encourage public school children to read as well as appreciate mathematics.

Education Secretary Jesli Lapus said that “math storytelling” will soon be held in the library hubs set up in certain public schools throughout the country among first to fourth year high school students.

Dubbed as the “Juan-day Storytelling at the Library Hub by the Math-emajess’yan” program, the DepEd will launch the project on Dec. 16 at a public school library hub in Plaridel, Bulacan.

“We believe that learning starts with an aptitude in reading. This program makes mathematics teaching more interesting, thus bringing about better learning among our students,” Lapus said.

It was learned that the project will make use of the “Max the Matrix & Co.” math reading module developed by Jesus L. Huenda, inventor of the eDamath/SciDamamath math board game and DepEd-Bureau of Secondary Education senior education program specialist, as well as a 1981 presidential gold medallion awardee for his innovative way of teaching mathematics.

Huenda’s “Max the Matrix & Co.”, which has Asian characters with exciting adventures in problem-solving, will be used by selected 40 to 50 fourth year high school students and some teachers in the division during the informal morning storytelling session.

The storytelling session continues in the afternoon with second year students and their teacher using Huenda’s interactive computer-assisted instructional (CAI) material “Fibo the Frog Math-emajess’yan” plus his eDamath. The eDamath involves a player against the computer and player A versus player B in Local Area Network (LAN) platform. These are in LCD, PC tablet and webcam.

“We thank Mr. Huenda for his initiative in making the teaching and learning of mathematics more appealing to our students,” Lapus said. “We encourage innovations like these which can help our students further expand their minds,” he added.

Damath and SciDama are board games similar to Pinoy’s dama where the players are required to do mathematical computations or climate change challenges, respectively, in order to win the games.                – Rainier Allan Ronda