An out of the box mathematics program is keeping local students’ brains active and they are loving every ‘problem solving moment’ of it.
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A group of stage two and three students from St Mary’s Primary School in Scone take part in a weekly mathematics initiative started at the school three years ago.
The Australasian Problem Solving Mathematics Olympiad team is made up of 23 students from years 3 through to 6 who have been identified by their teachers as problem solving thinkers who would flourish in such an environment.
The in-school program is run by community volunteer and former teacher Phil McGuirk who visits the school each Wednesday in terms two and three to provide problem solving lessons and competition papers to the students.
As well as the educational benefits, the program aims to stimulate enthusiasm and enjoyment for mathematics and provide the satisfaction, joy and thrill of meeting challenges.
Mr McGuirk said the program is based around higher order thinking mathematics with a lot of problem pre-algebra work, working with patterns and using common mathematic strategies to look outside the square.
He said he enjoys volunteering his time to teach the students as he likes to see the development in their mathematical thinking.
“We live by the mantra ‘mathematics is all about patterns, our task is to find the pattern’,” he said.
St Mary’s Primary School teacher and program coordinator Lynn Redding said the aim of the Olympiads is to challenge the children in the area of mathematics as it is an extension of what they normally study in class.
“The children learn a lot of specific strategies and solve a range of problems, and they are multi-step problems not just plus and minus sums,” Mrs Redding said.
“For Phil to offer the opportunity to our children is great as their confidence and results have improved so much in the past three years.”