Yough seventh-graders best in nation at math

A group of seventh-grade students from Yough Middle School have proven that commitment and hard work pay off.

They were recently informed that they were ranked first in the nation in the Study Island Academic Math Spirit competition.

Placing first out of 157 schools who took part in the competition nationally is quite a feat for the 100 students of Bonnie Egeland's math classes. The students worked for a one week period submitting math answers for the competition.

"It's amazing," Yough Middle school principal Anthony DeMaro said. "These students showed the power of inspiration and the power of motivation."

Study Island is a standards-based online learning program used by millions of students.

This was the first year that Study Island, founded in 2000, held the competition that was offered to students in 23 states.

Working both in class and at home, the students, who number about 100, spent many hours during the week of April 16 -20 on the competition.

The students at the middle school won the gold medal prize in the middle school division by correctly answering the highest average number of Study Island math questions per student. Students answered 77, 364 correct math questions for an average of 730 questions per student. Over the course of the four-week contest, Yough Intermediate Middle School finished in first place nationwide.

"We were 'in it to win it,'" laughed teacher Bonnie Egeland. "That was our motto."

Students worked in class and also on their own at home during the week, racking up as many math problems as they could.

"I went to bed early so I could get up," student Josh Esch said. "I worked on this whenever I had time. Whenever I was at home on the computer I'd just say 'maybe I'll go on Study Island' and I would."

Egeland said that the contest also became a completion between the students in some cases, and also between schools.

"One of the students heard that someone at Hempfield had 10,000," Egeland said. "These students were just so motivated and excited to do this."

John McClaren had over 15,000 math questions answered correctly and said that he worked hard to get the high numbers.

"I wanted to see how many I could get," McClaren said. "I didn't think that I had over 13,000 so I was happy."

In addition to the school award, Abbie Filapose was contacted that she ranked number one in the middle school division by correctly answering an incredible 23,823 math questions.


"I was really excited," Filapose said when she was told that she had ranked first out of the 23,918 middle school students across the nation who were part of the competition. "I ran up my driveway and screamed."

For winning the competition, the school will be awarded $1000 worth of Study Island Learning Products and Filapose will receive a $100 Amazon gift card that was also matched by her parents and by Egeland.

"We were told that Yough blew all the other schools out of the water," Egeland said. "I think its such an amazing accomplishment for our little school. It shows you how determined these students really were."

But most of the students did not do it only for themselves.

"I predicated in the Study Island contest because I wanted to try for my teacher Mrs. Egeland and to help set a goal for my school," student Hunter Lash said.

"What these students did was nothing short of incredible," DeMaro said. "They didn't have to do this. It was all volunteer. They did this for themselves, for their teacher and for their school."

by Marilyn Forbes
Last Modified: May 11, 2012 02:00AM
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