NEW YORK - June 14, 2021 - Teachley is partnering with the Hispanic Telecommunications and Information Network (HITN) and Sirius Thinking to create transmedia math kits aimed at supporting elementary students. Teachley recently received a Small Business Innovation Research grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences (ED/IES SBIR) to develop Teachley Math Kits, featuring the Math Corps, a brave band of superheroes who use math powers to save the day. The characters combat common misconceptions and help foster key math practices through engaging stories.
The project team incorporates the creative expertise of Sirius Thinking, a company founded by Chris Cerf, a Sesame Street, Jim Henson Productions, and Random House veteran, and the educational direction of Teachley, an edtech company founded by 3 women with PhDs from Columbia University. The Teachley Math Kits will focus on teaching abstract math concepts through engaging and playful narratives, brought to life via comic books, games, and videos. The partnership with HITN brings a strong focus on bilingual math education to support Latinx students and bolster home-school connections.
“We’re really excited about the potential for our narratives to captivate students, engage them in big math ideas, and also help them share these fun experiences from school with their parents,” said Dana Pagar, Cofounder of Teachley. “We’re also confident that better understanding the math practice standards will help students become more proficient in mathematics and ultimately improve outcomes.”
Teachley has strong, long-standing partnerships with local schools that will ensure the practice kits meet students’ needs and incorporate teacher and student feedback.
“We love the partnership with Teachley because it involves our teachers’ input and voices through informative feedback. Most importantly, it also helps our kids be lifelong learners by having a voice in the process and resources that impact their learning.”
“Teachley understands better than any other company we’ve encountered how to combine the latest education research on teaching math to elementary school children with wonderfully creative and amusing content. We’ve loved all our opportunities to collaborate with them, and the new Math Corps project is the most ambitious and exciting one yet.”
“We feel incredibly fortunate to take on this massive project and collaborate with Teachley and Sirius Thinking to bring home an original math program that more students on a national level will be able to take advantage of. In New York alone, 3.7 million Hispanics reside and many of them are parents with children. We want to embrace this opportunity to provide those parents new tools to share with their kids and help, particularly in these trying times where homeschooling has soared, and more diverse and ingenious education is welcome.”
About Teachley:
Teachley is an edtech company founded by former teachers with PhDs in Cognition and Learning focused on creating K-5 math software that promotes deep thinking and learning. Teachley has received small business innovation research (SBIR) grants from the US Department of Education, National Science Foundation, and National Institutes of Health to develop innovative math software for classrooms and deliver actionable data for teachers. Teachley’s first game, Addimal Adventure, won an Apple Design Award (2014) for outstanding innovative design and they have over 1.5M downloads across 8 games.
About HITN:
HITN-TV is a leading Spanish-language media company that offers educational and cultural programming for the whole family. It reaches more than 44 million homes in the US and Puerto Rico via DIRECTV, AT&T U-verse, AT&T TV, DISH Network, Verizon FiOS TV, Comcast Xfinity, Charter Spectrum, Mediacom, CenturyLink Prism and Altice, Liberty Cable & Claro (Puerto Rico). Download the “HITN GO” Everywhere App available on Apple, Android, Apple TV and Roku® with a cable subscription. For more information visit: www.hitn.org and follow @HITNtv on social platforms.
About Sirius Thinking:
Sirius Thinking, Ltd., is a New York City-based production company specializing in the creation of mission-driven children's educational entertainment. Founded by veterans of Sesame Street, Jim Henson Productions, and Random House, Sirius is noted for its work across a variety of media, focusing on television, interactive software, animated and live-action video, music, spoken-word audio, and print. The company is perhaps best known for creating and co-producing PBS literacy education series, Between the Lions which won ten Emmy Awards during its decade-long run on public television, and has been consistently demonstrated – in scientific research studies conducted by the University of Kansas, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and others – to improve the reading skills of early readers.