15 March 2023
Congratulations to the eight Year 10 students who, in teams of four, took second and third place for Woldingham at the Maths Feast competition held at Mayfield School on Monday 6 March.
Run by the Advanced Mathematics Support Programme (AMSP), Maths Feast is a fun educational challenge for Year 10 students, which tests problem-solving and teamwork skills. Ten teams took part in the competition, which comprised four challenging rounds requiring students to apply different skills and strategies for success.
Lilico, Jovie, Blair and Livvy, came second, and Caitlin, Katey, Tiffany and Fleur, took third place. The students, accompanied by Ms Farrell, really enjoyed the day and gained much from the experience, as they describe below.
Jovie
The competition was fun. Not only did we share our mathematical knowledge and learn from each other, but we also bonded as a team. Two weeks before the competition, the boarders who participated came together on a Saturday to work through past papers with Mr Amponsah, which was really enjoyable. My favourite round was the relay round, where we split into pairs and handed over our answers to the other pair for them to proceed with the question, like a relay race. It was a thrilling 20 minutes that required a lot of encouragement from our teammates to complete. I'm very grateful for the opportunity to take part and proud of us all.
Tiffany
The competition was a precious opportunity to improve my mathematical skills and expand my view on problem solving questions while competing against different teams. I learnt that sportsmanship is the most important aspect of a competition - I loved chatting to the other teams and they were all great competitors who made the stakes of winning really high. My favourite round was the true or false questions, because they were very general and there was real satisfaction in solving something you wouldn’t think could be solved by maths. Thank you to all my teammates. I really appreciate your effort.
Lilico
At the beginning, I was really nervous, but I was engrossed while solving problems under time pressure. Although I found the relay round the most difficult, I liked it the best. Our teamwork was very good as we had practised well.
Livvy
The competition was very exciting yet nerve-wracking to begin with because no one completely knew what to expect. Our practise sessions had shown we would need to be on the ball, ready for whatever questions came up.
I learnt to be more resilient as the questions were difficult. In the relay there was real pressure to get the right answer so that your counterpart pair could answer their own questions, which were dependent on your work.
I rather enjoyed the round where we had to convert feet, inches and pounds because feet are used in netball.
Blair
This was first time I had taken part in a team competition. One thing I learnt is to trust everyone in your team because then we worked well together and enjoyed solving the problems. I liked the relay match the most, where we had to deduce and estimate the value of pi from multiple dividing a circle into polygons, because I found it the most challenging.
Katey
I found the competition absolutely fascinating and valuable academic enrichment as it gave us the opportunity to attempt new questions we’ve not covered in class. It was a really fun experience solving maths in collaboration with my teammates. I hope next year’s Year 10 team enjoy it just as much.
Caitlin
I found the competition very enjoyable, and I feel like I've learnt a lot from it. One area I felt I needed to improve was my accuracy under time pressure, as it is quite easy to make small mistakes. I really enjoyed the pi comprehension round as I felt I learnt more about what pi actually is and now have a better understanding of it.