Maths Marvels

Eliza Cole

Head of Learning - Mathematics

On Thursday May 25, 20 students from Years 7 and 8 represented BSC in the Maths Games Day.  This event involved students from BSC, Pascoe Vale Girls College and Keilor Downs Secondary College;  students where grouped into teams of four - a total of 25 teams all vying for victory.

Students had attended several lunchtime practice sessions in the weeks prior to the day to familiarise themselves with the format of the competition, polish their competition skills and build on their teamwork skills. Teamwork skills really shone through in tackling the first task of the day: catching a tram and a bus to Pascoe Vale!

Maths Games Daybegan with the presenter encouraging students to exercise the 3 C’s of Maths': creativity, collaboration and confidence. At universities and in industries such as engineering, maths problems are usually tackled in teams, with many people communicating and sharing their ideas and experience.  Maths Games Day replicates this, presenting problems to which there are often more than one possible solution.  For this reason, tasks are not always as easy as they may appear to be!  Teams had to sometimes reassess their instinctive approach to a task,  offer and listen to different  ideas and perspectives, and take 'risks' in the competition by trying out different strategies.

Problem 1 involved stacking a series of cards labelled with positive and negative numbers so that all the columns, rows and diagonals added up to the same total. 

This sounded easy enough when the challenge was announced; positive and negative numbers was the first topic that our Year 7 students worked on to start their high school maths careers, so they were all confident with the maths. However, some creative thinking was required; many teams were coming very close to succeeding, only to find that (for example)  the diagonal rows did not add up to their target number. After around 15 minutes of strategising and discussion, the Year 7 BSC team Charlie Broadstock (7S), Olivia Thomas (7R), Ella Pagliario (7N) and Callum Martin (7S) were the first of all the teams to correctly solve the puzzle! 

Throughout the day, it was clear to see the satisfaction that students felt from solving a variety of challenging maths problems. After 15 minutes spent focussing on a puzzle or problem, the reward for succeeding as a team was far bigger than solving something that you know how to do straight away - and our students were quick to praise each other. Example of student comments made throughout the day include: ‘We couldn’t have solved that problem if Rangi hadn’t figured out the first step,’  and ‘I can’t believe how good Miro’s attention to detail is!’

At the end of the day, the leading teams were neck and neck, with only one point separating first and second place in the field of 25 teams. 

Tristan Ingham (8N), Eric Lee (8W), Niko Milne (8S) and  Jamie Rawther (8W) won the entire competition and were awarded T-shirts with mirror image slogans on them as prizes.  

Congratulations to all of the 19 students who competed, challenging themselves to do their very best on the day!

The staff that accompanied students to this event were so impressed with the way that all students involved worked together in their teams, challenged themselves, and conducted themselves with exemplary behaviour while representing BSC. I also thank Anuradha Tandon (Teacher) for giving up most of her planning time for the week to help us out on the day of the excursion.