Math Tools for a New Generation

Upper School rolls out TI-Nspire calculators.

The Poly math faculty brought an extraordinary memento back from summer break this year, and it has the potential to boost students’ learning in many ways. Department Co-Chairs Jon Fay and Malorie Wiebe, along with fellow teacher Laurianne Williams, attended a workshop on the newest class of graphing calculators and found a powerful, handheld computer with wireless connectivity.

“A teacher might do a demonstration on a laptop and blast it out to everyone’s device,” Fay explains, “and a student’s graph or equation can also be shared among devices as they are working, so the teacher can watch each step of the process or show the rest of the class.”

The school has purchased a full class set of the TI-Nspire CAS devices for teachers to begin using with students in accelerated courses this fall. Its built-in and downloadable tools illustrate symbolic algebra and calculus operations along with standard numeric calculations. While graphing calculators have been a common component of calculus instruction for years, the TI-Nspire makes significant steps in efficiency by connecting the entire classroom’s work.

These quick opportunities to illustrate concepts in multiple ways make each class period much more productive. In addition, the Upper School schedule now allows for one extended class meeting of 75 minutes per week in each course—a change Fay says gives math faculty enough time to train students on the fairly complex new devices. He is sure collaboration among teachers will also support the calculator’s implementation in the program.

“We have an integrated math curriculum, and our faculty constantly moves around to teach different courses—we don’t hire someone to teach just one math level,” Fay says. This feature is one of the ways Poly’s program has been at the leading edge of instruction for decades. Now the construction underway on a new South Campus building promises to help math and science faculty exchange ideas more naturally in common areas and neighboring offices.

With innovative new tools for learning and a well-planned space for faculty and students, the math program will continue to make great educational impact in the decades to come.