On Wednesday 1 March a small group of pupils from Years 7 to 9 headed to compete in the UK Mathematics Trust Maths Challenge Regional Final. Year 9 pupils Sam Nike, Kai O’Hare, Year 8 pupil Anthony Adamson and Year 7 pupil Matt Grundy were accompanied by Mr Chris Lehane-Kendrick in order to take part in the national competition, which is the biggest of its kind in the UK. Thank you to Mr Lehane-Kendrick for providing the following report on an innovative way to get children involved in maths outside the classroom:
‘There were a variety of tasks to accomplish as part of the contest. These consisted of a group round, where all four pupils worked together as a team in order to solve 10 challenging problems. There was a round on ‘cross numbers’, where pairs worked together to solve across or down clues for a common cross number. Pupils then took part in a shuttle round, where the answer of each pair was passed on to be part of the next question for the second pair – which was mastery of organisation, as well as a tricky round for the participants! The final round was a relay round, which involved solving as many problems as possible within the short space of 45 minutes.
25 teams from across the country took part, with the Shiplake team finishing 13th, ahead of many larger schools. The boys behaved superbly and were keen to get involved. Their effort was particularly impressive given that they have a young team. The competition is open to 11-18 year olds, making Year 7 pupil Matt Grundy one of the youngest participants from Shiplake College to have taken part in the contest.’