On 11th June 2019, four Year 5 boys (Aviral, Pranav, Sastha and Aarav) went to Reddiford Prep School to take part in a Mathematical Challenge.
First, we were split up into pairs. I was with Aarav, and Pranav was with Sastha. There were 2 other schools there, Reddiford and Alpha Prep.
There were 4 starter activities. These were, Cards, Dominoes, Kenken puzzles, and Shape-Making. We would have 15 minutes to do as many of these as we could, before rotating to the next activity.
In the Dominoes round, we had a grid with numbers on it, and a number of selected dominoes. We then had to strategically place our dominoes on the grid, so that the numbers on the dominoes lined up with those on the grid. We had to use all the dominoes and they could not overhang the grid. This was challenging as there were many possible places for certain dominoes to go.
For the Cards round, we had some cards from a set of playing cards and a grid with 2 equations on them. However, the numbers were missing so we had to use the cards to fill in the gaps. This was challenging as we had to solve both equations with only one set of cards.
In my opinion the Kenken round was the hardest. We had an empty 4×4 grid, and we had smaller rectangles inside it. These had a number and an operation in a small corner, which meant that when you used the operation with the numbers inside the box, it would equal the little number before the operation sign. This had to be done so that each row and column had the digits 1-4 exactly once each.
In the Shape-Making round, we had some plastic shapes and we had to put them together to make another shape that satisfied a certain condition.
This was challenging, as it didn’t have to be a regular shape.
After this, we also had a little 10-question multiple choice quiz, in which we had 45 seconds to answer each question and we had to choose from options A-E.
Finally, the scores were totalled, and we found out how well we did. In the end, our pairs stood first and sixth.
Written by Aviral Agarwal
Categories: School News
