Thursday 20th June saw four Year 8 students attend an Inter-Schools Maths Quiz at the UEA. Held in the Enterprise building at the UEA, Northgate’s team of Rhys, Josh, Keira and Tobie were up against 9 other teams from across Norfolk. Here they tell us about the day:
‘In the first round we were up against CNS and Terrington St Clements. Task 1 was Ken Ken puzzles which were very hard and confusing but we nearly managed to complete all of them and scored 14 out of 18. It was an excellent team effort, especially since we only learnt them on the day. Next it was the brain chain task. A brain chain is a sequence of calculations and one mistake means all of your calculations are wrong. We had two minutes to complete a brain chain individually and Rhys, our captain, managed to complete the full brain chain which is great!
The next task was estimating measurements and areas. As a group we had to estimate the length of lines and angles in a trapezium. This was our best task and we came joint first with CNS.
We then had a well-deserved break in the lecture hall and ate some free cookies and water.
Round two saw up pitched against Heathersett High School, a highly competitive team. First up was a statistics task where we had to answer questions individually, this was Josh’s strong point.
After this we had to solve some match stick puzzles, which were mentally challenging and included roman numerals. We worked as a group and thought logically about how to move the matchsticks to solve the problems; Tobie in particular excelled at this task.
The final task was the algebra one – another individual task. Keira kept her cool on this one and scored full marks.
Overall we had a great time and learnt new skills and enjoyed working as a team. We have attached some of the puzzles for you to try.
We would also like to say a big thank you to Mrs Iwanczyk and Mr Nicholson for driving the mini bus and to Mrs Smith for organising the trip.
