“Today is November 23. Do you know why we chose this day as the High School Math Day?”

“Fibonacci sequence!”

“Bingo!” “So one of our tasks today is to dictate the Fibonacci sequence to see who can go the furthest.”

This is a scene from the High School Math Day at Kaiwen Academy (Haidian).

Kaiwen Academy’s wonderful English Week had barely ended when the Math Week started.

Individual competitions, group competitions, fun games, and academic explorations—to name just a few—were the learning forms in this week’s math classes. Kaiwen Academy’s elementary school teachers held a math carnival for students.

Elementary school—math carnival

The piano piece, Song from π, was played at the activity site as background music. Displayed on the walls were math posters that the students had carefully made. “The overall theme of these posters is ‘number’. It is an academic activity with slightly different themes for different Grades: ‘digital kingdom’ for Grade 1, ‘magic number’ for Grade 3, and ‘glamour number’ for Grade 5,” elementary school math teacher Yu Xin said very proudly after seeing the students’ work.

Posters to learn about numbers

The carnival was held at the Basketball Hall and the Multi-purpose Hall in the elementary school building. Based on the curriculum difficulty levels of different Grades, teachers designed 17 competing games, including Balance, Tangram, Sudoku, Rainbow Necklace, Pi Citation, Rubik’s Cube, and Chinese Ring Puzzle, and a variety of recreational activities such as Flying Chess and Maze.

Scene of the wonderful event

The event combined traditional games and creative games, ancient Chinese arithmetic wisdom and Western-advocated logical reasoning. It taught through recreational activities.

Scenes of the wonderful event

Students received scores for each game won. They could then exchange the accumulated scores for prizes. Three students won the grand prize at the elementary school’s math carnival.

Junior high school—brain-burning KenKen

Math teachers of Kaiwen Academy’s junior high school prepared the KenKen game for students. KenKen is considered the most popular arithmetic game after Sudoku. It is a puzzle game that can develop students’ brain potential and improve their attentiveness.

Scenes of the tense game

KenKen, with different numbers of cells for different difficulty levels, uses a specified mathematical operation (addition, subtraction, multiplication or division) to work out a puzzle. Each puzzle contained “a trap, a discovery, and a story.” The game is divided into three parts: basic exercises, primary PK, and ultimate PK. Each student had 20 minutes to complete basic exercises independently or in cooperation with others before moving to the primary PK. Winners of the primary PK entered the ultimate PK.

Senior high school—not just AP math

In keeping with the elementary school’s Fibonacci sequence contests, the high school’s math competition day was also set on November 23. The teacher divided the students into several groups. Each group had an AP student who was responsible for teaching the other students some AP knowledge. Each group had to complete eight KenKen games collectively within a limited time. The AP student in each group was then separated from the rest of the group to complete other contests independently.

AP students were required to dictate the Fibonacci sequence while other students attended the AP math contests. The correct game rate of the first round of KenKen games determined the highest score of the second round of AP competition. The score and the AP student’s competition ranking determined the final results of a group.

“The game entails math knowledge, teamwork, and personal ability. This is where the charm of math lies,” high school math teacher Wu Yuxuan said, satisfied with the students’ performance.

The wonderful Math Week has come to an end. Next there will be a series of lectures under the “Kaiwen Extra-curricular Lecture Hall” program. Scan the QR code in the picture to sign up!