SHALIMAR — Some students at Shalimar Elementary School were skeptical when their teacher told them they were competing in a math contest.
Then the fifth-graders tried the online program and ended up winning a county and then a national competition.
“I didn’t know how she could make it fun,” said 9-year-old Brooke Geissel, recalling the day the idea was introduced.
But once she got her hands on the program, which makes students solve math programs in order to progress in computer games, she was hooked.
“I liked everything,” she said two days after learning Shalimar had beat out 1,002 other schools in the contest on the Sumdog website.
The 39 students had to answer 1,000 questions each from Dec. 14 to Dec. 20, said teacher Christine Galloway. When the final statistics were in, they had answered 34,324 of the questions they were asked correctly, she said.
The best performing student at Shalimar answered 987 out of 1,000 correct, she added. That landed him in the 47th spot out of 73,011 students in kindergarten through 8th grade who participated.
“This isn’t anything I did. This is teaching coming together from kindergarten to fifth grade,” Galloway said. “This is everybody’s success.”
The students had a week to finish answering the questions. They got progressively harder if they were answering them correctly.
“One of my students got a square root question and he was like, ‘You never taught us that,’ ” Galloway said with a laugh.
Ben George, who was the first student at Shalimar to try the program, said it’s a fun way to test and expand math skills.
“I think kids are learning sometimes and not knowing it,” the 10-year-old said as he focused on simplifying equations for the game he was playing.
Alexia Jones, 11, said it took awhile to understand how to play all the games, but once she did the math questions weren’t too bad.
“They give you a lot of questions in one group,” she said.
Since the competition ended, the students have continued to use the website at home, but Galloway said it likely will be awhile before they compete again on a national level. Right now they have a lot of important tests coming up, including the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, she said.
Contact Daily News Staff Writer Katie Tammen at 850-315-4440 or ktammen@nwfdailynews.com. Follow her on Twitter @KatieTnwfdn.