Ruckleigh Celebrates Victory Against Leading Independent Schools

On Wednesday 25th March, four our of year five mathematicians headed to KES Birmingham with Mrs Groen and Mrs Lynch to compete against a number of other independent schools from Solihull, Birmingham and surrounding areas. We started the day with some warm up activities before the first part of the competition which involved working together as a team to complete a numbercross. The team applied all of the techniques we had practised in school in order to successfully answer the clues methodically. The second part of the competition involved a relay race with challenging problem solving questions.

After lunch we took part in a workshop with Dr Ken Farquhar from the Inspirational Science Theatre Company. He challenged us to fold and unfold a piece of paper with an arrow on it so that the arrow rotated 180 degrees. Ethan was brave enough to demonstrate this and he was one of the few pupils that did it successfully when put under the pressure of being watched by a large audience. 

Later that afternoon, Ken showed us a number of tricks with a mathematical focus and we enjoyed predicting the outcome when we played a game called 'One left' this required two players to take 1, 2 or 3 straws from a bundle of 15 straws and the loser was the one that took the last straw. We thought carefully about the mathematical strategy required to win.

Finally, the winners were announced and we were delighted to come FIRST PLACE!! A fantastic result to end a fun-filled day, well done Ethan, Sanyuth, Vrishab and Ronith! There was some tough competition but you demonstrated exceptional problem solving and reasoning skills, well done boys.