More than 61,000 preschool and primary school students return to school in Córdoba with the challenge of improving their mathematics

One of the points that represents this day like few others is located at the confluence of Santa Victoria Street with the Plaza de la Compañía. There they meet, one in front of the other, the school Saint Victoria and the Immaculate. The words excitement and rejoicing are not enough to describe the scenes of return, with the entrances of both centers full of parents and children ready to meet their classmates again or to meet them if they come there for the first time.

“There is something new, the work of mathematics,” explained the educational director of early childhood and primary education at the Santa Victoria school, Felipe Muñoz Vaquerizo. “We must work on reasoning from kindergarten to high school in a special way.”

In this way, and after the adaptation of the first day, the minds of the little ones and the rest of the young students will be used especially for this subject, due, as Muñoz Vaquerizo explained, to the poor results in Spanish in PISA. reports: “Two years ago, recommendations were made to work more in depth on reading, and last year they caused a sensation with the mathematics following PISA reports and diagnostic tests, which came back this year. So it will be the year of mathematics, but the first day is a special day, of transition, neither vacation nor school, it is a day of greetings and catching up on what was done during the summer.

Santa Victoria’s first-grade teacher, Yolanda Jiménez, said the students are received, so they can get to know each other and the school, in the palm-lined courtyard behind the center’s entrance: “They come from kindergarten, which is a separate module. We teach them which grade they should go to and daily path what they have to do.” For her part, the director of Santa Victoria, María Amelia Vidal, recalled that those who start a course “are welcomed in the meeting room before going to the tutorials.”

Many parents take advantage of the opportunity to enter the school with their children, leaving behind the crowded entrance. And in doing so, they immortalize this moment of the beginning of the class with photos. This is the case of Rocío Carmona, who photographs her daughter, Yolanda Urbano: “She had I really want to come backThe first year of Primary begins and it arrives with a lot of emotion. Sergio García takes his son Álvaro, who joins Santa Victoria from Calasancio, that is, who is his first day and in another school. This father said with a laugh that he considered the start of the school year “as a liberation.”

At the nearby Inmaculada school, the scenes are repeated. In this center, they have chosen to vary the schedules slightly to avoid traffic jams. Thus, the Primary students entered at 9:30 a.m. exceptionally to avoid getting up early. And the youngest children in the Infant section enter at different times and even on different days to adapt better.

The director of the Inmaculada, Juan Campo, described this day: “We make the presentation, we greet the families, and during this day the tutors are with the students to present the new ones and the classes, it is like a contact“. With the head of the secretariat, Laura Arrebola, who welcomes us at the school gate, a whole movement of parents and children begins towards the classrooms. One of the mothers, Ángela María Rueda, takes her son, Víctor Manuel Trujillo, in sixth grade: “This day is a mix, because on the one hand they already had too much free time and, on the other, it is good that they return to discipline.

Own project

As for the mathematics that will mark this course, the La Inmaculada school has already launched its own project, Idea 5.0, before the government recommendations, the fruit of the work of the Santos Mártires Diocesan Foundation and Royal Council of Pious Schools La Immaculada. This model goes beyond its limitation to mathematics, since it reaches linguistics and neurodidactics.

Professors Ángela Herrero and Estefanía Montes explain the acronyms contained in this Idea (integrative, digital, excellence and active). “A child who experiences what we are working on remembers it, one who only learns it by heart will surely forget it.” With this method, they will not forget this mathematical knowledge that we sometimes resist so much from a very young age because of its difficulty.

And what children will certainly not forget, especially those who are entering school for the first time, whether in kindergarten or primary school, will be this: first day of class. And if you forget, that’s why there are dozens of photos taken by your parents or grandparents during this special celebration that tomorrow will become instruction and study.