Year 5 Maths Challenge
GSAL has been organising Maths Challenges involving Year 5 or Year 6 teams from partner schools since 2013. The Year 5 Maths Challenge is an opportunity to invite small groups of pupils and teachers into GSAL for a morning of competitive, maths-themed challenges.
This year, we also teamed-up with our partner charity MathsWorld to offer the prizes for the top three teams. MathsWorld has a mathematics discovery centre in Leeds city centre called MathsCity, and GSAL will pay for the classes of the top three teams to visit Maths City and the required transport.
Aims
To encourage a passion for maths in the Year 5 pupils of our partner primary schools as well as to promote our partner charity MathsWorld, which has a mathematics discovery centre in Leeds city centre called MathsCity.
To reach the maximum involvement from our partnership schools, we needed to offer the following:
1. A range of engaging maths activities that were challenging but not discouraging to the participants in each team. Activities were developed by the GSAL maths faculty. Team members were chosen by their primary schools based upon the pupils’ keenness for maths.
2. A venue large enough to hold the 20 participating teams, their teachers, one GSAL sixth form student per team and the GSAL staff. For this, we used the GSAL Assembly Hall.
3. An in-house transport provider that could pick up and drop off school teams and teachers that could not otherwise participate.
The three winning teams received a free school trip to MathsCity, including the transport. GSAL would cover those costs. Every child received a certificate with their name on it.
Background
The Maths Challenge was a regular event for several years before the pandemic, and this one was the first one held since. This Year 5 event in 2023 was the first one since the pandemic.
On the day of the challenge, as schools arrived, the pupils were given warm-up maths puzzles to complete individually or in groups. The Challenge itself consisted of four rounds of maths activities that ranged from mental arithmetic to cryptography. During a break time, in which the pupils received fruit and cookies and teachers received tea and a biscuit, the children also had the opportunity to guess the number of sweets in a large 5L beaker from the GSAL chemistry department.
Resources
GSAL maths teaching staff to organise maths challenges;
GSAL sixth form students to help on each team and to mark the challenges;
Teachers from partner schools to accompany their pupils.
Financially, GSAL will cover the costs of three classes of 32 pupils to attend MathsCity. The entrance fee is £4.50 per pupil. GSAL will also cover the costs of the three coaches to transport the classes. These will cost about £260 each.
Impact
Quantitative:
Nineteen partner schools participated along with one team from GSAL. Each team included four pupils and one GSAL sixth form student. In total, 80 pupils and 20 teachers from partner schools were involved in the event.
Three prizes were given out to the top Maths Challenge teams. Therefore, approximately 90 children will be given a free trip to MathsCity to explore and deepen their understanding of maths.
Qualitative:
Feedback from teachers stated how much fun the children had during their morning at GSAL. Teachers appreciated that it was a well-run event. One teacher also remarked that it was a pleasant change for the pupils to have time to work out problems, rather than be rushed, as often happens in a classroom setting.
In the week before the Maths Challenge, GSAL’s social media accounts featured a different maths challenge each day. They didn’t get much response online, but anecdotally, parents were understood to have talked about them offline. Potentially, parents are nervous to get their maths ‘wrong’ publicly. Hopefully, activities like the Maths Challenge and places like MathsCity help encourage children and adults to ‘have a go’ at maths.
Pupil Involvement
From the moment pupils came into the Assembly Hall, they were kept active with a variety of maths challenges. Each team of four Y5 pupils worked closely with their sixth form students, who explained the problems and offered help as necessary.
Frequency
GSAL plans to offer a maths challenge in a similar format every year.
