Archive: Around Town

American Mathematics Contest

Students at Lansing High School participated in the 60th annual American Mathematics Contest 12, or the 10th annual American Mathematics Contest 10. The contests were held on Tuesday, February 10, 2009.  The students competed for local, regional and national student and school awards. The contest, which covers high school mathematics, is given in participating schools.

Its purpose is to spur interest in mathematics and develop talent through the excitement of friendly competition at problem solving in a timed format. In 2008 over 250,000 students from 4,200 schools participated in the AMC 10 & AMC 12 contest Top scorers at Lansing were  freshman,, Cristian Zaloj (AMC 10 winner) and senior Brendan Hammond (AMC 12 winner).  AMC 12 team members (students with the highest scores) included Hammond, Katrina Mehringer, Ashley McDonald and Erik Rasmussen.


According to Prof. Steven Dunbar, who serves as Director of the American Mathematics Competitions, the AMC 12 (first offered in 1950), and the AMC 10 (first offered in 2000), are part of a series of contests sponsored each year by The Mathematical Association of America, through their program, the American Mathematics Competitions. The AMC offers the only math competition series in the country leading to the United States of America Mathematical Olympiad (USAMO) and the Mathematical Olympiad Summer Program (MOSP). From this group of students, the AMC sends the highly competitive USA Team to the prestigious annual International Mathematical Olympiad.

The AMC is located at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln; contests are given across the U.S.A, Canada, and in many schools abroad.

Wordmasters Competition
Three students representing Lansing Middle School recently won highest honors in this year's WordMasters Challenge-a national language arts competition entered by approximately 230,000 students annually, which consists of three separate meets held at intervals during the school year.


Competing in the difficult Blue Division of the Challenge, eighth graders Agi Csaki, Lucy Rogers, and Jonathan Sun all earned perfect scores in the year's second meet, held in February.  In the entire country only 125 eighth graders earned perfect scores.  Other students at the school who achieved outstanding results in the meet included sixth graders William Lewis, Meeta Shrivastava, Adele Ferris, Elena Gupta, and Kathryn Miller.  The school's students were coached in preparation for the Challenge by Cathy Moseley.

The WordMasters Challenge is an exercise in critical thinking that first encourages students to become familiar with a set of interesting new words (considerably harder than grade level), and then challenges them to use those words to complete analogies expressing various kinds of logical relationships.  Working to solve the Challenge analogies helps students learn to think both analytically and metaphorically.  Though most vocabulary-boosting and analogy-solving activities have been created for high school students, the WordMasters materials have been specifically designed for younger students, in grades three through eight.  They are particularly well suited for able and interested children, who rise to the challenge of learning new words and enjoy the logical puzzles posed by analogies.

The WordMasters Challenge has been administered for the past 22 years by a company based in Allendale, New Jersey, which is dedicated to inspiring high achievement in American schools.  Local students will participate in one more WordMasters meet in the coming months. 

National Shakespeare Competition
Adam Beckwith, a junior at Lansing High School, has been selected for The English-Speaking Union of the United States' 2009 National Shakespeare Competition.  This came as a result of his placing first at the Regional Competition on March 7th in Syracuse, New York.


Students across the nation in grades nine through twelve first competed in school-level competitions.  After winning the school-level competition, Adam then went on to represent Lansing at the regional competition in Syracuse. As the winner of the regional level, Adam now travels to New York City from April25-28th in order to compete at the semi-final and final levels.  The grand prize of the competition is a two-week summer course at the Oxford School of Drama in Great Britain.

Lansing wishes Adam the best of luck as he continues on the path to greatness!

Cap Quiz Bowl


Eleven members of Lansing's Seventh grade Enrichment team recently earned a FIRST place in the New York State Thinking Cap Quiz Bowl.   The 'Bowl' is a computer contest of 100 multiple-choice questions.  Areas covered include math, geography, government, sports, spelling, science, literature, English, history, general information and just plain fun trivia.  It is a team activity offering two chances to answer correctly each question.  Therefore, teams who do well usually are teams who can come up with a consensus answer quickly.  Lansing's seventh graders achieved 97%.  Twelve eighth graders took the same contest scoring 94%.  This earned them a very respective fourth place in New York State. 

Members of the winning seventh grade team include:  Emily Rasmussen, Clara Nelson, Dan and Jim Stoyell, John Schafer, Benjamin Geisler, Andrew Parkes, Anna Conte, Lauren Phlegar, Allia Ruparelia and Rachel Brock.

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