St. Peter's Primary Bray Blog

On Saturday, three of our students – Eduard and Lester Grefaldeo from 6th class and Sam Smith from 5th class attended the Mathletes National Finals. The day began with a session with The Think Academy, who organised a funfair themed maths challenge – including designing the fastest roller-coaster and finding profits for the candyfloss. The boys thoroughly enjoyed this session, just like they enjoyed the CSI themed challenge in DCU. There were 30 students each from 5th class, 6th class, 1st year, 2nd year and 3rd year so chq was full of students, families and teachers.

The Grefaldeos are ready for #mathletesirl – here we go! pic.twitter.com/YokqrVW4Oa

— St. Peter’s Primary (@StPetersBray) May 24, 2014

After the challenge with the Think Academy, the students moved onto the online testing and the word problem set. The online testing was a 30 minute challenge of speed and accuracy using Khan Academy. After all the testing was finished, there was a chance to tour the Maths Showcase, which included stands from CoderDojo, Maths Week, The Think Academy and Project Maths. All participating students also had the opportunity to take the Viking Splash tour around Dublin – highly recommended by our students. Each student then received a goody bag and a Mathletes t-shirt – the photo of the Communion Choir the next morning gives a hint to how much of a hit the t-shirts were!  

The boys checking out the brilliant @CoderDojo stand #mathletesirl pic.twitter.com/IZAaa8eOlo

— St. Peter’s Primary (@StPetersBray) May 24, 2014

The awards ceremony was the final part of our fantastic day out. Seán O’Sullivan and Bernard Kirk presented the awards to the students and the schools on the day. We were delighted when it was announced that we were the top primary school in Leinster in both categories! Congratulations to all the winners on the day – Cloughfin NS, our Twitter friends from Donegal, won the National Title for most points per student and we were thrilled to be there to cheer them on.

The Think Academy section of the day was a team event and Eduard was delighted to be on the winning team – again! He was also on the winning team in DCU. We were really excited when it was announced that there was to be a draw for a day’s workshop with the Think Academy and we were over-the-moon when it was announced that we won! The Think Academy are coming to Peter’s!

Thanks so much to all those involved in Mathletes – particularly to Seán O’Sullivan and to Minister Ciaran Cannon. A massive thanks has to go to Kelly Kirkpatrick, who co-ordinated the whole event! We had a fantastic day and we’re really grateful for all of her hard work. We’d recommend Mathletes and Khan Academy to every school and student – we hope you sign up for 2015 – we definitely will! Thanks to our three students on the day, who represented their classmates so well. They really did us proud on the day and over the months before. The two families who travelled on the day deserve great thanks too – thanks to Sam’s mum and to Eduard and Lester’s mum, along with Lester and Eduard’s little brother and sister, who came along to cheer on the Mathletes!