Southern River College students test out problem solving skills with UWA Professor

SOME of Southern River College’s most gifted students had the chance to learn from mathematics expert Professor Peter Merrotsy last month.

Part of UWA’s graduate school of education, Prof Merrotsy specialises in identifying and assisting academically gifted students.

In his interactive workshop, Prof Merrotsy worked with a select group of students on their problem solving and mathematical skills.

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He asked questions such as how many handkerchiefs could measure a horse and helped the group construct a one-metre cube to discover its volume.

Southern River College head of maths Cheryl Andrade said the school wanted to identify potential in at risk children with high learning abilities.

“Our concern has always been academically-abled kids may go unidentified and unrecognised, so we are keen to motivate students who have potential to achieve desired outcomes in their lives,” she said.

“We tapped into (Prof Merrotsy’s) expertise to help us identify young people who are often making the choice between excelling in any certain area of talent that is not valued by their peer culture or not.

“By getting (Prof Merrotsy) to show them how they could use their own problem solving capacity to achieve something, this was an icebreaker to help them.”