Dr Lynch and the Maths curriculum group hosted an exciting team-based Maths Challenge for year 8 and year 9 pupils from both Alton School and Amery Hill School, on the afternoon of Tuesday 23 January.  Eleven teams of four, with two year 8’s from one school and two year 9’s from the other, took part in three fun rounds of challenging Maths puzzles.  The first round was a crossnumber, like a crossword but with numbers instead of words, with half of the team only seeing the down clues and the other half only seeing the across clues.  The second round was formed of three shuttle mini-rounds, with the answer from one question, solved by one half of each team, needed to be able to solve the next question, solved by the other half.  With bonus marks for solving the questions quickly, the pressure was on all pupils for both accuracy and speed.  The final relay round involved pupils working in pairs again, having to quickly walk to collect each question for their partner pair, sat in a different location, to solve.  It was wonderful to see pupils from different schools enthusiastically working together, giving each other help and encouragement, in order to solve lots of tricky, but fun, Maths problems.  In third place were Ben and Emelia and two year 9 partners from Amery Hill; in second place were Amelia and Jessica and their partner year 8’s.  The eventual winners were Holly and Freya, along with two year 9’s from Amery Hill, who were each awarded a trophy to take home.  All participants will be given a certificate and were awarded credits for their energetic engagement.