At Monday night's School Committee meeting, DeMello Elementary. Principal Cathy Maccini visited to present some initiatives happening at her school.

Maccini discussed two of DeMello's major initiatives: "Numbers Talk" and "Hot Picks."

Numbers Talk helps children develop number sense. Children who struggle with number sense are unable to visualize or understand why their answer is wrong, so the double-faceted system helps them develop their “computational fluency.”

“With the kids, we’ve had to refer to it as a ‘spidey sense’ with numbers,” said math coach Maureen Dorsey.

The Hot Picks initiative was developed to get kids excited about reading. The program, after becoming stagnant, was revived at the beginning of the academic year.

According to Maccini, the reading recommendation program is more popular than ever. Where faculty used to provide their own reading recommendations, students are now lining up to give their own as well as providing book reviews and acting out skits from the books they have read.