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Mathematics
2002has been a year of hard work (as always) – full of challenges for staff (and students) as we endeavoured to assess and report in levels for the first time. It was also a year of pleasing successes – having attained a record number of prizes and commendations in student competitions.
The change in lower school textbooks to the “Nelson Series” meant extra work for staff, to become familiar with and make the best use of, this new resource that came with a supporting CD of additional worksheets for students to use in consolidation and extension as required. Our information evening for Year 8 parents, held earlier in the year, was very well attended and helped in the communication process between home and school to ensure that students made good use of this new resource. It highlighted for me the extremely high level of interest, support and importance placed on, Mathematics education by our parent community.
I wish to commend all the mathematics staff for the many meetings, extra work and generally positive way that they have accepted the challenge, to assess and report on student learning in outcomes by level. We have made a good start and are looking forward to extending the process into Year 9 next year. In chronological order, these activities have been:
The MAWAhave Sum Fun Competition
• Junior team representatives – Paul Coates and Drew
Flanagan (Year 10), Benjamin Creighton, Long Pham,
David Parkinson, Benjamin Golightly, Ben Bowman and
Thomas Cox (Year 9), Brent McIntyre, Justin Soon,
Michael Waddell and Ricardo Zanello (Year 8). • Senior Team representatives – Garret Bray, Alex
Mavrick, Luke McGinnity, Alex Hiley, Nam Nuygen,
David Richardson, (Year 12) and David Allen, Brian
Corr, Alexander Meegan, Christian Skinner, Michael
Sims and Konrad Wenzel (Year 11).
The Year 10 Mathematical Games Competition
Our school representatives were – Paul Coates, Richard Lowe, Jamie Rodgers and Joshua Webster.
The Mathematics Challenge Competition
Twenty three of the twenty four students whose work was submitted for national awards received certificates of credit or better. Special congratulations to Long PHAM (Year 9) who was awarded a Certificate of High Distinction and to Richard LOW, David SMITH and Joshua WEBSTER in Year 10 and Sean CHIA in Year 8, who were awarded Certificates of Distinction.
The WAMath-O-Quest Competition: Prize winners in this competition were:
• Justin Pietracatella, Christopher Wills and Drew
Flanagan (Year 10's) for their project on Healthy
Adolescents (2nd prize) • Thomas Cox (Year 9) for his project on Cultural
Concepts in mathematic (1st prize)
High Commendation awarded to:
• Long Pham, Daniel O'Connell and Steven Rimmer (Year 9's) for their project on Ploygons and their
Offspring • Minh Nguyen (Year 10) for his project on Irrational
Rules • Benjamin Creighton and Andrew Hislop (Year 9's) for their project on Cultural Concepts in mathematics • Desmond Yeo (Year 8) for his project on Adding More
The National Mathematics Talent Quest
Thomas Cox won first prize for his project on “cultural concepts in Mathematics”.
Tom travelled to South Australia to receive his trophy for this project. Congratulations Tom!
Australian Mathematics Competition
In the Australian mathematics Competition we had pleasing results as well with 3 prizes going to Xuan Ji (Year 8), Louis Westbrook (Year 10) and Brian Corr (Year 11).
An additional: • 8 students scored High Distinctions • 80 scored Distinctions, and • 165 scored Credit certificates.
This meant that 24% of our students scored in the top 15% of competition entrants and 68% scored in the top 50%, which is encouraging.
The WAMathematics Olympiad Competition
Our school was ably represented by Benjamin Creighton, Benjamin Golightly, David Parkinson and Long Pham.
The MAWAHave Sum Fun On-Line Competition.
Our school team consisted of Louis Westbrook and David Smith (Year 10), Benjamin Creighton and Long Pham (Year 9), Xuan Ji and Sean Chia (Year 8).
In conclusion, I am pleased to be able to report that Mathematics Education at the College is in a healthy state as witnessed by pleasing TEE results and even more pleasing results in state and national competitions. While we are hoping to be able to enhance our facilities to offer more student centred activities in the future – particularly in our mathematics enrichment programs. My sincerest thanks go to every staff member for their dedication hard work and professionalism. It is most pleasing for me to lead such a team.
May God's blessing be on all our students, teachers and their families and friends.
