ELGIN, S.C. — The sounds of friendly competition filled the halls of Blaney Elementary School in Elgin for a two-day pirate math challenge.
"It's for, one for fun for the kids, cause it's a math review for the concepts we've covered the last 9 weeks," said teacher Melissa Brown. "And so they are showing what they know, and so the excitement just continues to build up for them because they know it's coming."
The students were split into teams and then had to race to see who could solve their problems in the quickest time. But while it's all fun and games, Brown said it's helping with engagement and preparing students for testing.
"Repetition is always good, especially when it comes to multiplication facts. We are trying to drill the kids into memorizing and knowing those so that challenge table is very important, and it just keeps them on their toes," Brown said. "If it was a slow-paced thing and not timed, I think the kids would sit back and let the time pass. But since they know it's a competition and it's timed, they're really thinking hard and working together as teams to try and get the questions right. A lot of these questions are in the same format as SC Ready tests that they take, so it kinda prepares them that these are some of the questions you may see and it's a similar format."
As the teams dropped their chips into their holder to see who got the most questions right, the blue team won.
"The feeling of when you get a question right, that's just a really good feeling. That's my favorite part," said student Campbell Brown.
The students who win get the coveted Pirate Flag until the end of April.