Birchwood School Wins MATHCOUNTS Chapter Round at CSU

At the Northeast Ohio Mathcounts competition on February 19 the math team from Birchwood School turned in a phenomenal performance. They placed first in the team competition and first in the team countdown round. The team composed of Kavya R, Dhweeja D, Clive C, and Nate C along with Vinayak K who competed as an individual, recorded four of the top six scores. Chan, a seventh grade student, earned a perfect score, the first ever at this chapter competition.

Twelve students from the local competitions will advance to the state competition at Columbus State Community College on March 12. The top four individuals at the Ohio competition will progress to the National MATHCOUNTS Competition where they will compete against the top team from each state.

Currently in their 28th year, Mathcounts is one of the country's largest and most successful education partnerships involving volunteers, educators, industry sponsors, and students. The Mathcounts Competition is a national middle school coaching and competitive mathematics program that promotes mathematics achievement.

It is no surprise that these students have met with success, considering their history of hard work. Just since October 2010, each student has solved more than 1,000 math problems on a special project outside of regular classroom work; and they stayed after school for at least an hour twice a week - just to practice math problems. “A lot of students are smart, but few will work as hard as this group,” remarked Charles Debelak, math teacher and Head of School. Mr. Debelak coaches the team with Mr. Ravichandran, one student’s father. This group of students will travel to Columbus with the hope of placing among the top teams in Ohio.

Four Young Birchwood Students Are Published in National Magazine

Four students from Birchwood School’s first and second grade class were published in Spider Magazine, a national magazine for children 6-9 years old. Abeedah H, age 6, Zuha J, age 7, Bridget L, age 6, and Shruthi R, age 7, wrote poems related to holiday comfort food. Their poems will be printed in the March issue.

The Birchwood students prepared by reading acrostic and cinquain poems and then modeled their own work after them. Sticking to the structure of the model poem, students supplied details about the foods they loved to produce an original poem. Their practice paid off, as the four girls’ poems represent half of the works chosen from the USA for publication in the March issue. Rhonda Sprau, the Language Arts teacher of the students, said, “I’m proud of their effort. Having four students published in one month is phenomenal!”

Spider Magazine is a national literary magazine for children ages 6-9, and are part of the Cricket Magazine group. The magazine group has been producing top-quality children’s literature for 35 years. The girls’ poems can be viewed at
www.spidermagkids.com/corner.