The Olympics of Math
Waving blue pom-poms and screaming like their favorite team just scored the winning point, students at South Valley Middle School on Tuesday celebrated the school’s placement at the top of the leaderboard in a Bay Area math competition.Called LearnStorm, the initiative from Mountain View-based Khan Academy, is a nine-week math challenge open to all students in grades 3-12 that uses gaming concepts and a point reward system to encourage students as they gain greater math proficiency.At a special assembly on Tuesday, representatives from the academy along with Gilroy Unified School District superintendent, Deborah Flores; GUSD Board of Education member James Pace and school principal Anisha Munshi celebrated the school’s achievement in the math competition rankings, receiving a trophy for placing No. 1 on the Mastery Total Points leaderboard.“It is an amazing program,” said Valerie Kelly, South Valley Middle School math teacher and math department chair. During the assembly, Kelly presented top-scoring students with a certificates for their hard work.“The competition keeps them on task,” said Kelly, highlighting the point structure and the competition’s use of videos and diagrams to keep students engaged.All of the school’s math classes—more than 800 students—participated in the 9-week competition, which will culminate at a grand ceremony at Levis Stadium on April 5, where select schools in the Bay Area will be recognized.Flores said the competition, which started on January 29, and is made available to schools for free, rewards perseverance and reinforces skills taught in the classroom.“I love the way the program is set up,” she said, adding that her own son participated in a trial run of the competition last year at Gilroy High School. “It helps kids work through their math problems to figure out the answer.”Flores also appreciated the timeliness of the competition as a statewide math test is coming up in mid-April and the extra math preparation may help improve student scores.“I am hopeful that it will benefit individual performance in those assessments,” she said.Started as a pilot program at select schools in the region last year, the Khan Academy’s LearnStorm challenge is now available in counties throughout the greater Bay Area, from Napa to Santa Cruz.In the Bay Area, 1,000 schools participated in the competition this year, according to the Khan Academy.In addition to South Valley Middle School, Gilroy schools that participated include Gilroy High School, which placed second in Mastery below South Valley Middle School, Christopher High, El Roble Elementary, Glen View Elementary and GECA (Dr. TJ Owens Gilroy Early College Academy).To keep up with the latest school rankings, go to: learnstorm2016.org.
Rain, rain, here to stay
The rain will not being going away anytime soon in South County, as a series of storms are forecast for the area through Friday, according to National Weather Service forecaster Logan Johnson.Following up last week’s stormy weather—which brought between 3 to 3.5 inches to the area—today’s heavy rains have dropped an inch already (as of 3 p.m.) and are expected to add another inch before lightening up a bit.“We’ll have scattered showers the rest of the evening and then we’ll get a little bit of a break,” Johnson said. “The break is not going to be all that long, so things won’t get a chance to dry out.”Temperatures will be in the mid to upper 50s and down to the mid 40s throughout the wet week, according to Johnson.“There are a series of storms lined up across the Pacific (Ocean) set to come this way,” said Johnson, noting they are moving at a fairly good pace as well.After a reprieve later tonight and early Tuesday, the next storm will touch down late afternoon Tuesday and last into the night. The rains will soften up Wednesday. Thursday “is the best shot at a dry day,” Johnson said. “Friday another (storm system) is coming our way.”The City of Morgan Hill and the Santa Clara Valley Water District continue to supply sandbag stations at three locations in the city limits: the City Corp Yard, 100 Edes Court; El Toro Fire Station, 18300 Old Monterey Road; and Depot Street near Fourth Street, in the parking lot adjacent to the railroad tracks in downtown Morgan Hill.
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