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SOUTH SLAVE
Schools in the South Slave can now claim to own something very special – an official world record.

Hay River students check out a million beads laid out around the track at Diamond Jenness Secondary School on May 24. The string of beads has now been officially recognized as a world record. - NNSL file photo

The Guinness Book of World Records has recognized a string of one million beads created by the schools as the longest anywhere on the planet. It measured exactly 6,438.6 metres, or, put another way, 6.4 km.

Cathy Canavan-McGrath, the numeracy co-ordinator for the South Slave Divisional Education Council (SSDEC) and the driving force behind the one-million-bead string, received confirmation from Guinness on Nov. 6 that it was accepting the record.

Canavan-McGrath said she was happy to get the news.

"It was something we had been waiting for for a while and to finally get confirmation that they had accepted our documentation and all of the pieces that went with it was just very exciting," she said.

Canavan-McGrath said Guinness has a certificate in the mail to give the SSDEC print confirmation that its schools are now the new record-holder.

The chain of beads was measured and adjudicated on May 24 in Hay River, where it circled the track at Diamond Jenness Secondary School more than 16 times.

"We then submitted our data and supporting documentation in early June and have been awaiting a response," said Canavan-McGrath.

The previous world record for a string of beads was 1.7 km.

The South Slave chain of beads – known as the Million Project – took nearly 10 months of sorting, counting, stringing and tying by students, teachers, parents and staff members from SSDEC schools in Hay River, Fort Smith, Fort Resolution, the Hay River Reserve and Lutsel K'e.

Canavan-McGrath said everyone who participated can legitimately claim a role in setting a new world record.

"It's something that is certainly regional in focus," she said, estimating approximately 1,800 people were involved .

Canavan-McGrath said the goal of the project was to help students learn what a million really means and about the place value system in fun, creative and concrete ways.

"Rarely do we have the chance to see large numbers in concrete terms," she said.

Teachers integrated the project into their classrooms, she added. "Younger students focused upon counting and sorting, while older students were challenged to discover ratios, percentages and other types of mathematical relationships through participation in the project. I was amazed at the variety of ways in which the classroom teachers incorporated the Million Project."

The beads have now become a permanent feature of the schools' math programs. The string has been broken down so that each South Slave school has lengths of 100,000, 10,000 and 1,000 beads.

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