This year, all of LC2 completed the Junior Maths Challenge and I went on to a follow up round and did the Junior Maths Olympiad. Some people went onto a different follow up round called the Junior Kangaroo.
The Junior Maths Challenge was very interesting and helped stretch me and test me on applying the skills I learned in class. In the weeks before the challenge, I tried to prepare myself by using past papers, which helped me to strengthen my methods to face the questions given to me on the day.
When the time for the actual challenge came, the earlier questions were much easier and quicker to answer, but by the end of the paper, the questions required a lot of thinking and working out to solve and achieve an answer. After the hour of silence, everyone was discussing the questions and talking about their own ways of filling it in.
After that day, the topic of the challenge was temporarily forgotten until a few weeks later when we got our results. They were announced in class and I was very happy and excited when I got told that I qualified for the Junior Maths Olympiad.
On the day, I was given the paper and I answered the questions to the best of my ability. Like the Junior Maths Challenge, they started out easy and quickly got difficult when it got to section B. I had to write full solutions to my questions in order to score points. However, unlike the previous challenge, there were no multiple-choice questions which added a layer of difficulty to answering them.
After the two hours of working on the Olympiad, I felt relieved that I had finished it. Overall, I feel the whole experience was very refreshing and I am glad that I got the opportunity to take part in this challenge. It has helped me find my weak spots in the subject of Mathematics and also shown me the topics where I do the best in.
I think that I have benefited from this experience very much and I hope that students in the future will also enjoy it as much as I have. I wish that I will get to participate in challenges like this in the future because it has really enhanced my understandings of Maths and problem solving. I believe that it is a really great competition for everyone and they should all try their best in things like this and take up every chance they get.
Veeva, LC2
The Junior Maths Challenge and Olympiad is a UK based competition ran by UKMT (United Kingdom Mathematics Trust). It is an ideal way for students to showcase their problem solving skills. - Mr Davies, Head of Mathematics