Maths Week England 2019

This week, pupils at Westholme Senior School will be participating in numerous events as part of Maths Week England.

We like to involve students in new and challenging national events whenever possible and this week marks the first Maths Week England challenge.

The aims of Maths Week England are to:

  1. Raise the profile of Mathematics throughout England
  2. Change the conversation about maths in the population at large to be more positive
  3. Allow children and adults from all social and economic backgrounds to access and enjoy interesting mathematical experiences
  4. Support teachers to plan special low-cost high-impact maths activities at their own schools during Maths Week
  5. Encourage Higher-Education centres to invite schoolchildren to visit for maths events, in order to raise aspirations and encourage higher take-up of the study of maths at A-level and university
  6. Make maths accessible and enjoyable for people who thought it was an elitist subject for ‘clever’ people: to ‘love and enjoy’ is a worthy goal!

In school, all students took part in a quiz during form time.  Year 7 all had the chance to use the online platform, Mangahigh.com to compete against schools from across England over the 7 day challenge period.  Students take part in maths activities and games, which in turn contributes to medal points with the aim of winning a gold medal.

Students from any year group could also get involved in this by attending Maths Enrichment Club at lunchtime and the LRC was full of enthusiastic mathematicians determined to reach  high scores.  As of today, Westholme were placed 7th in the national rankings!

Year 8 were also given the opportunity to take part in a data visualisation competition in their Maths lessons. This aimed to get students thinking about different ways to represent data, focusing on sales of Christmas jumpers and climate change.

At Westholme, we encourage our students to challenge themselves and try activities which can enhance their learning. Maths Week England is certainly helping to do that.