Numbers game gets undivided attention

Working on a problem yesterday are (from left) Luke Eiserman (10), Cissy Fang (11) and Eugene Fong (10). Picture / Kenny Rodger

Anyone who thought the age of competition had given way to the age of participation at schools has not visited Glenfield Primary in Maths Week.

Try this. Five of the top students from each of five classrooms are in a maths showdown. They have eight problems to solve in 45 minutes. There are 120 cheering 10 and 11-year-olds and their five teachers. How many decibels are raised?

Maths Week turned out to be a non-contact contender for the Roman Circus. A team watched from the floor, eyes wide, to see whether their judge would shake the head or raise the arm. The shake was for a wrong answer.

Room 15's judge was a student from Room 16 and was particularly fierce. She stared down an imperious nose at the hopeful faces of Room 15 before shaking her head. Sometimes there was a smirk.

But Room 15 had Eugene Fong - aka Eu-Genius - and Cissy Fang, who doesn't need a nickname because everybody knows she can calculate with the best of them.

Cissy says she doesn't really like maths, it's just that she's good at it. She likes art and computers.

Her teammate Calvin Li, whose record is 20 questions in 22 seconds, is happy to blow Cissy's trumpet for her.

"She's the best maths person in the class. In class, she can do 20 questions in 17 seconds. Her nickname should be Helen Clark."

Even Cissy comes unstuck on question five. Under time pressure and the howling of onlookers the answer eludes the five teams competing.

Team 17 are the underdogs - they are younger, a mix of Year Five and Year Six students.

But when Room 15 hits question seven, Room 17 noses ahead, finishing in 31m 54s, and are the only team to get question eight.

Class 15's Luke Eiserman is disappointed. "We did think we were going to win, until we slipped up on seven and eight. But five and eight were the hardest, because we couldn't figure them out."

There are casualties in the Glenfield School equivalent of transtasman rivalry.

Deputy principal Kate Harland is Room 15's teacher. Her friend Tracey Bullen is Room 17's teacher.

Miss Bullen told the children at the start that she was not allowed to sit next to Ms Harland in the staffroom because they get told off for talking and that rule also applied to the children.

As it turned out, Miss Bullen's room beat Ms Harland's.

The Association of Mathematics Teachers president Alan Parris said the aim of Maths Week was to get children "excited about the numbers in their lives." Schools would have competitions and events all week.