This week Presentation Secondary Waterford celebrated Numeracy and Problem-Solving Week! Math's is always important but during Numeracy week, we make sure to emphasize the importance of numeracy and problem solving across ALL subjects. We also make sure to keep it fun and interactive for all students!
On Tuesday all TY and 5th Year history students were lucky enough get a talk from Robert O’Connor from the SETU IT department who talked about ‘Breaking the Code during WW2’. His talk involved topics from math's, history and coding. In this workshop all students go the knowledge of how code breakers based at Britian's Bletchley Park cracked the secrets of German communication during wartimes.
To finish off Tuesday 5th and 6th year students had a college and careers talk. TJ Mc Donald came in from the department of Computing and Mathematics from SETU and Rachel Lawton came in from RedHat to discuss all about their jobs, what they do and how they got into what they were doing!
Numeracy and Problem-solving week aren't just fun for the students however, as Math's teachers also had a blast while making up some games for their students, such as Numeracy Millionaire (‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ only with math's related questions) and also scavenger hunts done with graphs. TY students also got to help out as they helped set up and advise 1st year students during the scavenger hunts!
During the week we also had many workshops, we started off with a chess taster session which was ran by fellow students that went on throughout the whole week. On Thursday the 26th of January, the school's chess club invited St. Angelas Ursuline Secondary over for a friendly chess tournament! Everyone in the club got the opportunity to play, in either the beginner, intermediate or advanced section. Despite it being our chess teams first match ever, several games were won! Anyone who may be interested in joining the school's chess club can meet in Ms. O'Sullivan's room every Thursday at lunch. Everyone is welcome, no matter your ability level. Thanks so much to Mr. Foley and the St. Angelas chess club for the brilliant addition to numeracy week, we can't wait for the return match!
The lunchtime coding club also got to participate in Numeracy and Problem-solving week as they used ‘Scratch’ to design a game called ‘Deep Sea Sushi’.
To wrap up the week Brian Harkin from the University of Limerick delivered a Scratch Coding Workshop to all 1st year students on how to draw polygons. He also presented the CodePlus Certificates to 8 TY students who participated in the program!
A special thank you to all teachers, students and guests for their role in making Numeracy and Problem-Solving Week such an enjoyable and interactive week that was filled with learning and fun!