A team of 16 pupils and three teachers set off for the first face-to-face AIBWSI senior Maths Team Competition hosted by the International School of Florence. The competition took place on Saturday morning and saw teams of four pupils competing against their peers from four IB schools in Italy.

Pupils were engaged to tackle challenging problems for more than three hours during which everyone enjoyed solving the questions together in their teams. There were three rounds each of which come with various different types of activities. In the first round, pupils consisted of several sets of five multiple choice questions. For the second round, they were given a crossnumber puzzle, which works like a crossword, but instead of letters, each square must be filled with a number, forming 3-digit or 4-digit numbers. To make things more complicated, most of the across and down clues require the answers from other clues to be solved. To obtain high scores in this puzzle, pupils needed to have strong team working and communication skills, which they did. The winning team (from St George's!) found 127 out of the 132 digits correctly, an outstanding result! In the third round, pupils were given 40 minutes to solve a set of 10 open questions as a group. 

After an excellent lunch, an Awards Ceremony was held. The first and second places were taken by the two Year 12 teams from St George’s, the third place was taken by the Southlands team. It was almost a clean sweep for St George's as our Year 10 team came 4th by only three points! 

By Ms Kearney, 
Teacher of Maths

Year 12 Team 1: Maya (12J), Vicente (12V), David (12A) and Josh (12J)
Year 12 Team 2: Sam Coen (12M), Vittoria (12V) Sara (12A) and Juan (12M)
Year 10 Team: Bo Li (10J), Flora (10J), Sveva (10J) and Kevin (10M)
Year 10 & Year 11 Team: Giulio (11J), Isabella (10M), Kevin (11J) and Stella (10M)
All led by their Maths teachers: Ms Clapp, Ms Kearney and Mr Strang.