On Wednesday 13 March, Eltham entered a team of four students into the Mathematics Team Challenge Regional Finals at St Olave’s Grammar School. We have had success in this competition in the past and had a strong team of Charlie (Year 9), Yuxuan (Year 9), Oles (Year 8) and Dylan (Year 8) who have all performed well in the individual Mathematics Challenges that the school run.
When we arrived, students were able to have a go at a few practice questions and then we were in to real competition which started with ‘The Group Round’. The team were able to work together to answer ten challenging problems relating to all different types of Mathematics. The team made a steady start scoring 44/60. This was followed by ‘The Crossnumber Round’ which is much like a crossword but with numbers as opposed to words. The team split into pairs with one pair tackling the across clues and one pair the down clues. The students performed well exceptionally well here scoring 58/60 which meant that at lunchtime we were announced as one of the top six schools but were unsure of the exact position.
After lunch, the team remained in their pairs and took part in the ‘Shuttle Round’ where answers are passed back and forth between the pairs with each subsequent question relying on the previous answer. With bonus marks for speed this is always a challenging round but the team secured full marks in two of the 4 sections and picked up good points in the others. Finally, there was the ‘Relay Round’ which is always the favourite with the students as they have to run as many questions and answers between their pairs and around the hall as possible in 45 minutes. The students got through 26 of the 30 questions available with all but one being correct.
As always, it was a very enjoyable day which challenged the students in a range of problem-solving activities and when the results were announced Eltham finished third out of the 34 schools.
Oles and Dylan will have the opportunity to give it another go next year alongside two of the top Mathematicians currently in Year 7.
Written by: Mr Baldwin
