It’s a math competition that adds up to more than just a trophy for students.
The Peterborough Victoria Northumberland and Clarington Catholic School Board’s Mathematics Olympics returns this week, pitting 17 teams against each other in daylong competitions running Thursday and Friday.
The event held at the Catholic Education Centre in Peterborough focuses on number sense, patterning and algebra, geometry, data management and measurement.
There’s also a heavy emphasis on gender equality.
“I think that girls can do anything if they put their mind to it,” said Ariah Stevenson, a Grade 4 student at St. Joseph Catholic Elementary School in Bowmanville.
Vidhi Patel of St. Catherine Catholic Elementary School in Peterborough agrees.
“Well, I think math is for anyone, actually. It’s just fun,” she said.
Organizers say progress has been made to address gender inequality in mathematics, but admit there’s still work to do.
“There is this perception that boys are good at math, and girls might not be,” said teacher Sandra Connolly. “And so we want to help everyone recognize that everyone is a mathematician and everyone can do math.”
To highlight that point, each team of Grade 3 and 4 students is an equal division of girls and boys.
“You need to be good working with each other. It’s a team effort,” said Ethan Fletcher, a Grade 4 student at St. Catherine.
Gender politics aside, what’s really motivating these bright young minds is a love of the numbers.
“Probably times tables and subtracting and adding,” said Tara King a Grade 4 student at St. John Catholic Elementary School.
“I like trying to divide fractions into different fractions,” added her schoolmate Sarah Black.
Ariah says she enjoys the multiple choice questions while working in teams and helping others.
“I like when you have to struggle, because it gets my brain, sort of like, excited,” she said.