On Thursday 21 March, the Mathematics Department of San Andrea Senior School organized the seventh edition of the Mathematical Olympiad. This is a yearly challenging competition, the content of which ranges from advanced algebraic problems to problems in different branches of mathematics which is not necessarily covered in class.
The main aim of this Olympiad is to promote team work whilst creating an atmosphere of healthy competition through the practice of problem-solving skills and other strategies. Similar to previous years, all students from Grade 8 to Grade 11 participated in this competition, since the Grade 12 (Form 5) students were busy with their tutorials and revision for their MATSEC and IGCSE examinations. Each grade worked out the different sections of the competition during the set time-slot. Obviously, the questions and their level of difficulty varied from one grade to another.
All the mixed-ability and co-educational students in each grade were taken in turn to the Audio-Visual room of the school and divided into groups of four or five according to their House Colour. The competition consisted of two different sections for each grade. The first section required the students to work as a team within their group and each group was given a paper with a set of questions, which they had to work out in twenty minutes. Then for the second section, each group had to choose one field of mathematics on which they wanted the question to be based. Such fields included many areas, amongst which algebra, geometry, fractions and number theory. When the chosen question was projected on screen, all the participating students were given enough time to discuss as a team and come up with the correct answer. Obviously, different questions carried different amount of points. The winners of this year’s Maths Olympiad will be announced in the annual School trophy presentation ceremony taking place in the first week of June.
For the first time, in this year’s edition, the department made use of polling devices during the Maths Olympiad of the Grade 8 students. This student-centred system involved the use of wireless interactive keypads, which enabled the students to answer the challenging and graded questions in a more professional, transparent and organised way of answering questions.
The questions presented to the students were multiple choice questions and through the use of such wireless polling devices, each team had to input their answer by pressing the correct button on their device. Apart from motivating the students even more, this type of communication tool also ensured that all the teams were actually answering all the questions.
Moreover, this was an effective way of giving students the opportunity to integrate Mathematics with ICT.
As a new mathematics teacher at San Andrea Senior School, I experienced the Maths Olympiad for the first time. It was surely a success since one could clearly observe that the students were highly motivated and they showed great interest in both sections of the Olympiad. Such competitions are of great academic value since they provide ample opportunities for students to train their mathematical reasoning, as well as the calculating skills covered in class. They also encourage students to value the intellectual pursuit of mathematics while learning in an enjoyable way.
This event would not have been possible without the great team work shown by the Mathematics teachers under the guidance of their Coordinator Godfrey Spiteri. A lot of preparation was required in order for this event to be a successful one. Apart from the questions, which had to be made in such a way as to cater for each grade’s level of difficulty, a number of power-point presentations had to be set up for the second section of the competition.
The Mathematics department is also thankful to the school’s administration for their support and encouragement for such educational initiatives.