It has been a long time...

We've been silent for a bit, enjoying half term and - for the past two weeks - working on the answers to the video challenge, which all the teams coming to our inaugural competition next week are doing. (If you didn't make it off the waiting list for next week's competition, sign up to our autumn competition - details are coming to the website soon. If you email us, we'll make send you an invitation as soon as we launch the date so you can be first in line.) To get our competitive juices flowing for next week, the St Peter's team is hosting a mini challenge at today's practice. Our two teams will be competing against their coaches, their class teachers (year 5 and 6) and their head teacher, the formidable Miss Frazer. The challenge is "Countdown". There's lots of strategy involved, so we'll give ourselves a few minutes between rounds to compare notes. If you want to play, it's easy. All you need is paper, pencil, a stop watch and the link below. For those who have never watched the British game show, the aim is to make the number in the blue tiles by adding, subtracting, dividing and/or multiplying all or some of the numbers in the yellow tiles. Generate the numbers by clicking the yellow tiles and then by clicking stop when the blue tiles start spitting out digits. We find that giving ourselves between 3 and 4 minutes works. http://happysoft.org.uk/countdown/numgame.php

We played a very fun game called Countdown. A link to an online version, and the rules are listed at the bottom. This game definitely made us feel like a failure and that we were facing an impossible task at first, but by the second round we figured out our individual weaknesses and strengths and were more focused and DRIVEN to get as close to the number or the number itself. It was a highly rewarding experience because by the end each of us were able to drastically improve the way we solved the problem. Our blood was definitely pumping at the end of practice with exhilaration. http://happysoft.org.uk/countdown/numgame.php Rules : Select 6 numbers (at least one large number) from the cards. A number is then randomly generated. Set a time (we did 4 mins) and have each person try to get the actual number or as close to it as possible. Use the 6 numbers in any combination of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. For example, you cannot square one of the numbers. Here's one of our problems that stuck in my brain: The 6 numbers are: 90, 10, 7, 1, 5, 3 Generated number: 836 90 x 10 = 900 900-836 = 64 so if we can find a way to make 64 from our 7+1 = 8 remaining numbers we can simply do 900-64 = 836. We 5+3 = 8 found a way to make two 8's to make 64. Bang on target! 8 x 8 = 64

Another Nrich Maths challenge on visualising shapes.