World Maths Day 2009 at Moor House School

4th March 2009 was World Maths Day and Moor House School students got involved along with thousands of other students from over 160 countries around the world. The aim was to break a world record, and hopefully set a new one!

On World Maths Day in 2008 children from around the globe managed to answer 182,455,169 maths questions correctly, and the challenge this year was to beat that score and set a new world record!

Children take part by going to a special website where they are matched up with students of similar ability from other schools around the world. They then play a 1 minute game together with these students, answering maths questions at varying levels of difficulty with questions on adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. Every correct answer they provide earns them (and the global team) one point - and gets them a little bit closer to breaking the world record.

As they take part, students can see how well they and the children they are playing alongside are doing by looking at a colourful graph that continuously updates to show their progress, and at the end of the minute their score is shown.

Students were able to play as many times as they wanted to over the course of the day - lessons, mealtimes, rest breaks and bedtimes permitting - and it was fantastic to see so many students motivated by the activity and really feeling positive about their Maths ability.

Over the course of the 24 hours, Moor House School students managed to answer a staggering

13,694 maths questions correctly!

All the students who took part did brilliantly, with a few students answering over 1000 questions each which was amazing.

Students were extremely pleased to discover that they had helped set a new world record of

452,682,682 correct answers in one day.

 ...which just means that the challenge NEXT year will be even harder!

Have a look at some photos of the event below.