Keep your fingers crossed! The national results come out later today or tomorrow! Last week we had over 50 students online at one time competing in the American Math Challenge. This is a national challenge where students log-on to the AMC site and solve math problems. They get points for correct answers, and the longer they compete, with correct answers, the higher their score. The unofficial results on the website, as of the time one of our students logged-off at midnight, suggested that TWO of our students, one sixth grader and one seventh grader, MIGHT be in the top 40 in the country. We have also been told that Friends School finished 19th nationally for Math Counts schools.
It is great to have so many students so charged-up about math. The right to friendly bragging rights means that our students were both competing for the school and for themselves. Individual strengths united for the team! I am told that very shortly we should be able to confirm how our individual students did.
Regardless, however, they had a lot of fun. (Remember what I shared with you before – Math is Fun!) Now I do know that the sixth grade teachers did note some lethargy from one of our potential top scorers when he arrived the next morning. I can’t officially condone skipping a reasonable bedtime, but it is exciting to see this level of engagement with a subject some of you may not recall as fun.
On a related note, one of our goals this year is to increase and improve the ways we incorporate technology into our curriculum and lesson plans. Students are graduating into a digital world and often they are already the leaders in their families in the use of technology. Thanks to generous support from the Parents' Association we have been upgrading our network and hardware infrastructure to support this work. Last week we put this to the test with so many students online at one time for the competition. Many thanks to the PA for helping us engage with the challenge so fully!
Oh, and our potential individual top scorers are sixth grader Alex and seventh grader Justin. I won’t tell you which one had the higher score. You can ask them.
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