Primary school children throughout the central region of Chile were awarded in School Mathematics Tournament (CMAT 2015), sponsored by the Center for Mathematical Modeling (CMM) of Universidad de Chile.
The event took place at Universidad de Chile Theater and was led by academic director of CMAT Rafael Labarca and CMM Researchers Jaime San Martin and José Soto.
Students from 5th to 8th grade were part of the tournament. In the 5th and 6th grade categories, they competed in six and five-member teams: 63 teams participated in the first category while 70 teams were in the second one.
At contrary, in 7th and 8th categories, children competed by themselves and 402 students joined in the 7th grade category meanwhile 387 were part of the 8th grade category.
Labarca highlighted the participation of the schools alongside of Chile: “A year of work is ending and another new begins again. Now we have a training program for teachers. We hope to integrate more schools from different cities next year but it’s nice to see students of this age participating in the tournament”.
For CMM Researcher Jaime San Martin, “this tournament is a luxury. It seeks to give opportunities to many people. It’s already established and we must thank all the students who dedicate their weekends to work on this”.
In José Soto’s opinion, the contest “is great and indispensable. Such activities are very necessary for education in Chile”.
On the other hand, teachers, parents and students were excited and stressed the importance of mathematics and the tough competition among the participating schools.
“Children learned a lot, especially because it was the first time of our school in this competition. It was a surprise to get to this place among many teams”, said Patricia Galaz, mother of Bárbara Vargas. Her daughter studies at Colegio Excelsior, which awarded first place in the 5th grade category.
Gerardo Martínez, teacher at Colegio Alicante del Sol, which won first place in 6th grade, said: “The prize is a merit to the student’s efforts and organization as well as the teachers and family support. We’re happy to have won a disputed and worked first place.”
“At first I was nervous because we didn’t know if we were going to win the 1st place, and when I heard that another school achieved the second place, we got happy. Seven years ago my school got the 2nd place, so wining the 1st place is quite powerful,” said Agustín Gutiérrez, 8th grade student of Instituto O’Higgins from Rancagua.
