What began as moment of inspiration has snowballed into a change of culture within not only my class but every class that uses 'Ninja Maths'. Students have knitted replica ninja's, written songs and created film clips based upon 'Ninja Maths'. Also a whole new behaviour management plan created just because of what I call the 'Ninja Revolution'.So what is 'Ninja Maths'?Put simply it is a tool you c
an use as a part of your maths program to help motivate and inspire learning of basic facts. The program covers multiplication, division, subtraction and addition. An excel document, which generates 151 random questions every time it is opened, is used to test how many correct basic facts students can produce in three minutes. The score the student achieves is compared to the Ninja ranking poster and the student receives the corresponding ninja card. At all the trial schools the students have displayed remarkable motivation to learn their basic facts and have unsurprisingly displayed remarkable improvement.How else can it be used?As a behaviour management tool. Students with the highest ranking ninja scores (this could be most improved, among many other options) get rewarded by going out to recess, lunch and/or home first. You would be surprised by how effective this small reward can be to increased motivation for learning and behaviour.So how do we know it works?The improvement in all classes that have implemented 'Ninja Maths' is nothing short of remarkable. If you are familiar with John Hattie's 'Effect size', you will know that 0.4 is the normal improvement seen in an area of learning over the course of a year. After analysing the data from the classes using Ninja Maths for a term it was found to have an effect size of 2.7. That is almost 7 years worth of improvement in 10 weeks!What do you get?You will receive 9 different printable ninja cards and the Ninja Ranking poster which explains the different rankings and scores required to achieve them, with amazing illustrations drawn by professional illustrator Paul Spencer. One excel document which contains four spread sheets one for each of the four operations. This excel document will generate 151 random questions for each of the operations every time it is opened. A PDF document explaining the easy steps involved in implementing 'Ninja Maths' in your classroom. © 2012