Mill Creek lauded as Front Row Super School

Mill Creek Elementary School has been named a Front Row Super School. In this photograph, Mill Creek students are engaged in an experiment with a weather balloon. CONTRIBUTED

MADISON – Mill Creek Elementary School has been named a Front Row Super School.

Super Schools represent the top 150 of more than 35,000 schools that use Front Row, a company that provides online, adaptive math & English Language Arts resources in classrooms for grades K-8. Schools earned the award based on analysis of usage data during the 2015-2016 school year.

Front Row has more than 30,000-plus math questions and 180-plus English arts articles, each at five different reading levels and covering all K-8 standards. Students start off with a diagnostic and algorithms that show problems exactly at their skill level.

This practice ensures students are always engaged and challenged, never facing material that is too difficult for too easy for them, according to a press release.

These real-world lessons allow students to discover math concepts for themselves. Covering all standards for grades 1-8, lessons also incorporate various science and social studies standards. Each lesson is designed to fill a day’s math block (or 55 to 75 minutes) and is 3 to 5 days long.

To equip teachers, Front Row provides a daily presentation, video and inquiry sheet. Teachers need only about 15 minutes of prep time.

Front Row emphasizes inquiry-based lessons. These cross-curricular activities build conceptual understanding of mathematical topics while students explore real-world scenarios.

In an inquiry-based lesson, students learn by developing questions to answer and work together to find solutions. Inquiry-based lessons encourage collaboration, critical thinking and productive struggle among students. This approach promotes conceptual understanding instead of teaching students to resort to an algorithm.

Front Row provides students with the means to not only stay on track but to actively develop the skills they need to be motivated, self-starting learners for their entire lives, sources stated.

The staff at Mill Creek includes Principal Carmen Buchanan and Assistant Principal Karl Fernandez.