All four of our challengers

On Friday 17^th March, four children (Jessica, Sky, Jasmine and Finlay) from Year 5 went to Newcastle High School for Girls to attend a maths challenge, competing against private schools, academies and primary schools also participating in the activities, determined to make their mark in the maths challenge.

Douglas Buchanan, the mathematician organising the competition, also arrived, which was quite a treat, as Douglas Buchanan currently lives in London, and had to ride many trains and had to make a long journey to get to Newcastle.

The four children travelled by Metro, escorted by Mrs Rowland, going from Regent Centre Metro Station to West Jesmond Station. After that, they tried to find their way to the school and (after stopping many times to ask people where the school was, and also using the help of Google Maps) they made it.

In the morning, everyone did a fun outdoor challenge. The children from GEMS had to partner up with a different school, so they partnered up with Riverside Primary School.

The first challenge, in the morning, was set outside and included estimating the height of a tree (which they did by working out how much taller a teacher was, then guessing how many teachers could fit in the tree), working out how much every playing card was worth (the details are a bit complicated so I won’t explain them to you), working out how to put five mats in the correct position and making a triangle that had as many triangles in it as possible.

In the afternoon, it was the inter-school challenge. There were about five or more questions, each question had to be done in eight minutes. They included Broken Calculators, Dominoes, Curly’s Cycle Route and Make the Triangle. Although we did not win, we did enjoy the experience and the brain workout! 

By Jessica, Year 5

Jessica and Jasmine hard at work