There has never been such a course for children in Jaslo before. Dozens of elementary school students have begun or will soon begin training in mental arithmetic. This is a unique opportunity for young residents of Jaslo to develop their own intellectual abilities and mathematical competence, which will certainly pay off with success in school. The course participants’ meetings with arithmetic are held at the GEN Science Generator.
The Mental Arithmetic course is an absolute novelty in Jasło. Never before have young Yaslanians who are elementary school students had the opportunity to participate in trainings that allow them to develop and improve, among other things: concentration, photographic memory, accuracy and speed of reaction, self-confidence, creative thinking, hearing and perceptiveness, and imagination. This innovative method of learning effectively brings out the potential that lies in the minds of young people. What’s more, thanks to the unconventional form of implementation of the classes and the tools used by the trainers, a child who was previously not on good terms with mathematics, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, begins to treat it like an intellectual adventure.
Last Wednesday (January 17 this year), the first four class groups began mental arithmetic training. The next ones will do so this coming Friday. At first, the children will learn what a Soroban abacus is and how to use it. Once they have mastered the skill of using this seemingly intriguing object, they operate the abacus beads under the watchful eye of trainers. Thus, they stimulate the work of both brain hemispheres, making the thinking process much more efficient.
With subsequent classes, course participants will use the abacus less and less often. All this is done so that they can perform the simplest calculations in memory. This is so-called imaginary abacus work. During the training sessions, children use not only the abacus. They also receive an exercise book in which they record the results of calculations both on the abacus and in memory. The degree of difficulty of the tasks increases with each subsequent training. The most important thing in all this is regularity. This means that participants in the Mental Arithmetic course should devote at least a quarter of an hour each day to training. However, the reactions of children directly delighted with the first classes leave no doubt that arithmetic challenges will also permanently enter their homes.
The Mental Arithmetic Course is a task implemented by the City of Jasło with funds from the project “Jasło – my city, my home” within the framework of the project: “Jasło City of Knowledge”, financed from the funds of the EEA Financial Mechanism 2014-2021 and the Norwegian Financial Mechanism 2014-2021 and the state budget.
