June 22, 2026 (Kemptville, ON) – This year, students at Kemptville Public School (KPS) took on a creative project aimed at building math confidence and excitement across the Upper Canada District School Board (UCDSB).
While preparing for EQAO testing, the Grade 6 class saw an opportunity to promote a positive math mindset within their school community. The result is a collection of stickers featuring laugh-out-loud math puns and a t-shirt design with a confidence boosting message:
U can do math
Confidently,
Daily,
Successfully,
Boldly!
“I have found that students often have strong feelings about learning math, both positive or otherwise — including students with anxieties about it or a sense of uncertainty,” said Grade 6 teacher Jordan McNalty. “To combat this in a small way, we brainstormed ideas for how we could promote positive math talk in our school.”
To kick off the project, students researched math jokes to incorporate into their designs and used the graphic design platform Canva to create eye-catching visuals.
To narrow down their selections, the class engaged the school community by hosting a vote to determine the top 12 designs. Selected favourites include:
- How do cows do math? With a cow-culator.
- What is a math teacher’s favourite type of snake? A pi-thon.
- What do you call a number that can’t sit still? A roamin’ numeral.
- How does a mathematician plow a field? With a pro-tractor.
“For the t-shirt, we searched up words that would help with math and then used those to spell out UCDSB,” explained student Cain Seabrook. “We didn't know if they would actually use it, but then they said they loved it!”
Once the designs were finalized, the class partnered with teacher Brad Vaughan at North Grenville District High School (NGDHS). Vaughan and his Grade 10 Technological Design class brought the concepts to life by printing the stickers and producing the t-shirts.
“It feels pretty good because we all worked on this for a couple of months before we sent it off to NGDHS to get printed,” said student Eddy Craig. “It's really nice to see the physical stickers and t-shirt. To actually have it in your hands is so cool.”
“My sticker made it in the top 12, so that felt pretty good,” added Hendrix McCallion. “Mine is the Cow-culator one.”
Hoping to extend the impact beyond their school, the students approached organizers of the popular, board-wide UCDSB Math Gameshow. The virtual event brings classrooms together to tackle challenging math questions and is one of several innovative strategies that has contributed to improved EQAO performance across the board.
The students thought they could build on the shows excitement and help their fellow students feel good about math, promote positive learning mindsets, and build math confidence by offering their new merchandise as prizes in future shows. The UCDSB agreed, and the stickers and t-shirts will be featured as giveaways throughout the 2026–27 school year.
The project also caught the attention of Knowledgehook, the platform used to run the Math Gameshow. Impressed by the students’ creativity and initiative, representatives from the company plan to incorporate some of the designs into their own materials worldwide.
“I was so impressed with the engagement I saw during the entire process,” said McNalty. “It was quite meaningful. Students were excited to work on their designs and I was so impressed to see this sort of student commitment at such a pivotal moment in their educational career.”
Looking ahead, McNalty hopes to expand the initiative with next year’s class, continuing to spread confidence and enthusiasm for math through creativity and humour.