MONTAGUE — Math Interventionist Veronica Hirst says when she works with students at Hillcrest Elementary School, she wants to help them understand what makes the number five, a five.

“A big focus is the ‘fiveness’ of a five,” Hirst said about teaching her kindergarten and first grade students the foundations of math. “And so what makes five?”

The questions of what makes a five a five, what other numbers make up a five and what a five looks like are all basic but invaluable questions Hirst works through with her early learners to help them build a conceptual foundation of understanding mathematics that will take them into their future math education.

This fundamental learning of math is something Hirst, Sheffield Elementary Math Interventionist Nikki Henderson and Gill Elementary Math Interventionist Lauren Steer have been working as a team to instill in the students at each of their schools.

These positions, funded through a state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) Multi-Tiered System of Support Grant, were created three years ago to provide extra support to students at the elementary schools who need assistance in understanding and using the math they are learning in the classroom. Each of these teachers had previous teaching backgrounds in elementary education. Henderson works with students in second grade through fifth grade at Sheffield Elementary and Steer works with kindergartners through sixth graders at Gill Elementary.

This grant was in partnership with the U.S. Math Recovery Council program Math Recovery, which provided in-depth training and certification to math interventionists so they could help their students at the three elementary schools gain a better handle on their early math education.

The interventionists say they meet their students where they are at in their math education, target where each student needs support, use classroom data and teacher feedback to know when they need to intervene, and evaluate how they are progressing with assistance. They work with students in small group settings to individualize their assistance and help students understand what they are doing in math rather than just knowing how to solve a math problem.

“If you don’t have that real solid basis, that foundation to fall back on, then it just becomes procedural and you don’t have the understanding behind it,” Hirst explained, adding that the team of three used every grant dollar to bolster their abilities as math interventionists, but also to help teachers by giving them professional development training using the knowledge they’ve learned through the Math Recovery program.

Due to their impact on the district’s students and teachers and the use of the DESE grant, Hirst, Henderson and Steer were recently invited to speak at the Math Recovery 2025 National Conference in Falls Church, Virginia.

Their talk, titled “Layering AVMR Strategies: Enhancing Instructional Practices to Support Student Learning in Math,” spoke to their training with Math Recovery, and how they’ve been able to use the DESE grant money to design and implement data collection methods, professional development opportunities, and family and community outreach about their roles.

The conference welcomed math interventionists, educators and researchers from the U.S. and beyond, and Steer said during their presentation on the first day, the feedback they received from attendees was constructive.

“There were people who listened to our presentation, who were in similar situations and maybe a little bit ahead who gave us some ideas of things that we could add to kind of build up our program as math interventionists,” she said, with Henderson adding that they’ve had interventionists from Virginia and Wisconsin reaching out to look at some of the materials they’ve created for reference.

After speaking the first day, the team visited other talks, panels and discussions throughout the weekend to see what keynote speakers were discussing and how they could incorporate those practices into what they are doing now in the Gill-Montague Regional School District.

Being invited to the conference in the first place was something Hirst said can be attributed to Gill-Montague’s “atypical” level of training and success with the Math Recovery program, and that their work is creating a positive impact on student and teacher education, as well as bolstering student confidence.

“They actually love coming, they love doing math,” Henderson said. “They are making connections in the classroom and feeling better about themselves.”

Henderson continued, “They’re participating more, they’re confident in their skills. They’re able to flexibly think of their numbers and share their ideas, and not have that nervous, sitting-off-to-the-side [behavior], hoping that nobody calls on them.”

Although the school just finished up the last year of the DESE grant, the FY26 Gill-Montague budget has absorbed the costs of the three math interventionist positions, meaning they’ll continue to work with the elementary school students to teach them, and their teachers, the math fundamentals necessary for future success.

Erin-Leigh Hoffman can be reached at ehoffman@recorder.com or 413-930-4231.