News

We’re so proud of Middle School Math Teacher Marsha Fleming who recently presented at this year’s virtual Southeastern Association for Science Teacher Education conference attended by college professors, graduate students and Ph.D. candidates. As math and science education are often intertwined, Marsha was invited to submit a speaking proposal by one of her graduate school professors. She chose to address a common math (and science) learning problem – how to help students retain what they have learned from previously taught units and how to effectively use these skills in combination to solve problems spanning multiple concepts. Marsha’s graduate work and research focused on combining 2 memory strategies – retrieval practice and interleaving (continuing to regularly practice already learned ideas alongside new concepts). Supported by the discriminative contrast hypothesis and comparative thinking, as well as the distributed practice hypothesis, interleaving retrieval practice teaches students to identify things that look similar but are actually different (e.g. 5x=25 and 5x=25) and to look at problems not in isolation but in connection to all skills previously learned. Springmont’s Middle School students benefit from Marsha’s love for learning and deep engagement in her subject matter!