They won the regional 24 tournament today. And it was pretty cool to see 17 schools support their math student teams that were enjoying this game so much.
Nick Tran reads and writes as well as any other fourth-grader, but he communicates best in a language without letters, one he visualizes.He found a club of like-minded students at Sporting Hill Elementary School, in the Cumberland Valley School District, and a teacher who stays with them after school so they can connect.
Student conversation is rapid-fire and goes like this: "Three times eight is 24, five minus four equals one, and one times 24 equals 24!"
The Sporting Hill students "speak" in numbers as teacher Joan Gillis coaches them through rounds of a game called Math 24.
They're proving fluent.
Nick, classmate Braydon Kylor and fifth-graders Rachel Kang, Cece Kessler and Matthew Heidelbaugh last month outscored Math 24 teams from six other district elementary schools.
Today, they're matching wits with students across the midstate in the 24 Challenge Math tournament hosted by Cumberland Valley.
Young mathematicians in attendance are from Mechanicsburg, Camp Hill, Lower Dauphin and Steelton-Highspire school districts and Holy Name of Jesus and Saint Joan of Arc Catholic schools.
They are competing to be the fastest to add, subtract, multiply and divide numbers on four corners of the blue Math 24 game cards to reach a total of 24. Students who reach a solution first must tap a card, then cite every step of their answer within 15 seconds.
Players must have rules of number operations committed to memory to be competitive. Many also memorize exact formula sequences to solve dozens of cards. But that isn't necessary to play well.
"I can't memorize things, so I have to [solve] each one," said Rachel, who is Sporting Hill's individual champ.
In last week's practice, it was clear she and her teammates enjoy the mental math. Laughs and high-fives follow the verbal equations that rush between them.
"In language arts, you have to read; but in math, you just do problems," Nick said.