A group of fifth grade students at Ironton Elementary recently scored a major achievement.

The “SumDog” team won the national championship for the week of Dec. 7-13 for the website, which is dedicated to math tests, games and races.

According to the website, Sumdog is used in thousands of schools worldwide and is designed to motivate children to work on math, reading and writing. The website personalizes the questions for each one, and tracks their progress through the school standards.

Out of 12,316 students in 1,766 classes who took part in the competition for the week, the team had 10 who placed in the top 50.

They also finished first in the local completion, with 8 of the top 10 students being from the school.

The team’s coach, Leslie Kerns, said she is proud of the motivation the students showed in reaching their goals. There were many hours put in toward reaching this goal, which they scored just before the holiday.

We congratulate Kerns and all of her students. It is good to see their hard work and mastery of mathematics pay off.