The Hughes Academy 6th and 8th grade MathCounts teams recently placed first in an on-line nationwide competition and finished 34th in the world. The competition was sponsored by Mathletics, a math website that, according to their website, is "the next generation in online math learning platform, helping students enjoy math and improve their results".
Hughes participated in the last week of October during an open competition that ended on October 31st. During the week, the teachers who sponsor MathCounts at Hughes, Rod Hill, Sharon Merck, and Amanda Cushman, were commenting on how well the students were doing. Then on Tuesday, the next to last day of the competition, Mr. Hill said that Hughes was in first place in the nation. Then, Mother Nature struck!
Hurricane Sandy hit the northeast the last week of October and the beginning of November and affected New York City, where Mathletics is located. Because of the devastation of the storm, their offices were closed for much of the next week and Hughes did not know how they had fared. Finally, the results were tabulated and Hughes had indeed finished first in the United States with over 103 thousand points. While no specific total on the number of schools that participated, all 50 states were represented during the open competition. It was also determined that the Hughes team also placed 34th in the world!
In preparation for the competition, students would work on a variety of math problems provided by the national MathCounts resource book. They also worked on math problems from the National math association magazine.
The 6th graders would work on a sprint question every day at the beginning of class. They were ranked from 1st to 4th, according to speed and accuracy. The top four students that get the best ranking and overall performance will go to Clemson University in February to participate in the Piedmont Chapter Competition.
Chase Claxton, a 6th grade participant said the experience was fun, "It was great because it was interactive. You get play against other people in the world." Chase was Hughes second highest scorer with almost 16 thousand points. Alka Manoj led Hughes with 16,771 points.
Mr. Rod Hill, one of the MathCounts leaders said he is looking forward to the next open competition. "It's great to see the students succeed. They really did a great job!"
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