Fun tools spark Buffalo schools’ math rebound

Three South Buffalo first graders pored over pieces of a puzzle, each marked with two numbers ranging from -10 to 10.

Their task: put four pieces together to create a single wheel in which the pieces add up to 10, but arrange them wisely so that the overall puzzle has 10 wheels with the same sum.

In mid-May, Leonardo Galeotti, Isabella Reinhardt and Cillian Byrne, ages 6 and 7 in Felicia Glogoza’s class at Lorraine Elementary School, inspected the pieces of the state-sponsored math game in front of them. Buffalo school students had already ridden six wheels, but the other four were elusive.

Did anyone have a coin with a positive 4? If a wheel already had a -10 coin, what three other positive numbers could add up to 20?

The math was basic, but the critical thinking, concepts, and teamwork required were not. Completing difficult but fun quests like this pushed the three first-graders to test their mettle in Albany on Saturday against New York’s best in the state’s elementary math competition, a partnership between the Department of State Education and First in Math.

The Lorraine students’ results — the second year in a row that a team from the school has qualified — are emblematic of Buffalo schools’ aggressive efforts to improve their overall math skills and catch up with the state average.

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