The Math Coach

AMC 8

2005-11-14T19:58:00.000-08:00

Each year, the Mathematical Associations of America offers American Mathematics Contests (AMC 8, AMC 10, and AMC 12) to avid math students at middle and high school levels. AMC 10 and AMC 12 are high school competitions that will lead to the selection of United States Math Olympaids team competing internationally every summer.

AMC 8 (American Mathemetics Contests 8) is a middle school math competition. The purpose of the contest is to develop interest in mathematics and problem solving through a friendly and fun competition. It covers math subjects covered in middle school Pre-Algebra, Algebra I, and Geometry courses. Any student 14.5 years of age or younger on the day of the contest, and not enrolled in high school (grade 9 or above) are eligible to participate.

The AMC 8 is a 25-question, 40-minute multiple-choice contest with no penalty for guessing. A student's score is the number of problems correctly solved. A school team score is the sum of top three student scores. The top three students for each school will receive respectively a gold, silver, or bronze Certificate for Outstanding Achievement.

In 2004, 154,590 students from 2,595 schools participated in the contests. The average score for 7th grade is 9.55 and 8th grade is 10.48. 50 students received the perfect score of 25. In California, 13,213 students from 154 schools participated in the contests. The average score is 10.11. Six students received the perfect score of 25.

Getting Ready for the AMC8 & Math Olympiads Round 1

2005-10-27T22:45:00.000-07:00

I took a business trip to Argentina at the beginning of the month and have been extremely busy with my work. I did not even get time to write a single post during the past five weeks.

The math team has been functioning nicely and we now have 16 members. It is very rewarding to see these kids wake up early in the morning, come to school at 7:00am and ready to do math. They demonstrated great passion toward learning while having fun with their teammates.

In November, we will participate in two competitions:

November 15: AMC8
November 16: Math Olympiads Round #1

AMC stands for American Mathematics Competitions administrated through Mathematical Association of America. It offers a number of contests toward the goal of selecting the U.S. Math Olympiads team. AMC8 is the middle school competition. It contains 25 questions with a test time of 40 minutes.

Math Olympiads is a middle school math contest. It consists of 5 rounds. Each round has 5 questions with a test time of 25 minutes.

Since last Wednesday, we started to prepare for the two competitions. Each session, I taught a single topic such as divisibility, counting, sequences, etc. I then gave the kids a worksheet with 10 problems to apply what they learned. These problems ranged in various difficulty levels so that everyone would be able to solve several problems, but usually no one got all of them right. I then gave out optional homework to supplement the training sessions.

Here are a few tips to do well on these competitions:

Read the problems carefully. Know exactly what form the answer should be produced before attempting to solve a problem. Kids at this level usually make a lot of careless mistakes because they are impatient in reading the problems. It's beneficial that the student learns attention to details earlier in life.
Manage time wisely. If the student has not learned Geometry, do not try to answer all the problems. The student should focus on the problem types he knows how to solve and take time to make sure he makes no careless mistakes. This is part of the test skills training.
Complete homework. The homework is a collection of the more difficult problems found on the AMC8 competitions or a specific type of problems frequently appear on the Math Olympiads contests. If the student knows how to do all the homework problems, he should do well on the competition.
Review classroom handouts. The same is true for the classroom handouts. I selected those problems carefully to reflect the type of problems appear on the competitions. Majority of the problems were actually drawn from past contests. If the student truly knows how to solve these problems we discussed during the classroom, he will do well. If the student did not have time to complete the classroom worksheet, he should finish them at home to make sure he understands the materials. In addition, it's very helpful to make corrections to own mistakes.
Have fun and do one's best. Remember that each student only competes against himself. Have fun learning new methods of solving math problems and set own goal to do better each time. Don't compare score with others.

Objectives for September

2005-09-17T11:01:00.000-07:00

The second week of my coaching career came to an end today. My first objective for September is to make sure all the kids are excited to participate in the math team activities. I want them to feel that math is fun so they are willing to wake up at 6:00 in the morning to attend the meetings. We used different techniques such as games, competitions, Rubik's Cube and Donuts. So far, the attendance is outstanding and the team has grown to 15 members.

My second objective for September is to assess the capability of the team so we can provide materials suitable to kids at different levels of math learning. It will also allow us to prepare the kids for different contests format and problem types. So, over the next two weeks, we will administrate 4 simulation contests (Math Olympiads, AMC8, Math League & MATHCOUNTS). Based on the results of the contests, we will divide the team into two groups. The junior varsity team will focus on Math Olympiads problems. The varsity team will focus on MATHCOUNTS problems.

Math Competition

2005-09-16T11:41:00.000-07:00

Last year at San Diego Math Circle, I found the kids had a lot of fun playing team-based math contests. Each team race to solve problems and put answers on the board. So, I decided to modify the format for our team.

Today, we divided the group into three teams (RED, GREEN & BLACK) with 5 students in each team. After I taught them some basic factorization techniques, the three teams compete against each other to solve 10 factorization problems.

Each team work on problems as a group. After they solve a problem, one of the team members writes the solution on the board. The first correction solution earns 5 points, the second earns 3 points and the last earns 1 point. If a team put up an incorrect answer, they receive -2 points. My modifications of the original format include 1) once a team posts a score, it cannot be changed, 2) if a team post a wrong solution, it receives a 2-point deduction. The modification is aimed at balancing speed with accuracy.

The kids had a lot of fun as they race against each other to solve the problems. The results were very close. The BLACK team earned 16 points, GREEN team earned 14 points and RED team earned 12 points.

The origi

Mental Math

2005-09-09T22:28:00.000-07:00

Today's theme was "Number Sense" with a focus on clever arithmatics. All of our kids know how to add, substract, multiply and divide. However, they were introduced to calculators too early and ended up missing a lot of fun in mental math. So, we developed a number of practices to get them used to mental math.

One of the practices was called "Speedy Math". Here is an example:
123123123/123 = ?

It is very simple and the answer is 1001001. However, did you get the answer in less than 5 seconds?

We gave five problems and the kids were asked to solve them in 5 seconds each. Not all the kids were paying attention when the first problem was presented. You should see their reaction when the problem disappeared after 5 seconds. Heather and I got a good laugh out of it. From that point on, everyone was 100% into the practice and did very well.

First Day

2005-09-07T12:14:00.000-07:00

All kids showed up on time for our first class. Today's topic is titled "Fellowship of Nine Rings" from the 2005-2006 MATHCOUNTS School Handbook. It consists of 10 problems related to equilateral triangle, 30-60-90 triangle, circumference, and areas.

We started with a warm-up exercise to review some of the basic geometry concepts and then dive into the problem solving session immediately. The problem set is challenging to both advanced and beginning problem solvers so everyone learned few things today.

I really like this group of kids. They are respectful, disciplined, and eager to learn. Everyone participated and wanted to share their solutions with the others. I had a good time working with them.

We decided to make Rubik's Cube as a part of the curriculum. All the kids got very excited when I distributed the Cubes to them. Here is the official website: http://www.rubiks.com/

Thanks to Jo Ann, the donuts she brought was a big hit to close our lesson in the early morning .

"The good beginning is half way toward success." I had a good time for the first day.

Analysis of First Assessment

2005-08-31T22:09:00.000-07:00

I asked all the mathletes to take an assessment at home using Sprint Round of the 2001 MATHCOUNTS Chapter competition. 11 of the 12 mathletes turned in their work last night and the results are very encouraging.

The scores range from 28 - 8 with average being 16. They can be classified into three groups:

1. The top three kids had scores range from 28 - 25. All three of them are taking high school math classes and have few years of math competition experiences. Therefore, they are expected to do well. The mistakes they made are all careless mistakes. Eliminating these mistakes will lead to perfect scores.

2. The next three had scores range from 19 - 16. They have good understanding of algebra and some exposure to geometry problems. Most of them did not finish all the problems. If they can increase their speed, they will be able to solve all the problems with time to check answers within the time limit. Consequently, they should see their scores in the middle 20s.

3. Five kids had scores range from 8-10. These kids have the most room to improve since they are just starting learning pre-algebra. All of them demonstrated a solid understanding and mastery of the topics they learned so far. As they get exposed to new math topics and problem solving skills, their score will also improve quickly. For these kids, the work on the math team will make their pre-algebra class really easy.

Our goal is to make the coaching session meaningful to all the kids. In some sessions, we will have two sets of problems: varsity and junior varsity. The varsity problem set will be used for those who scored above 15. The junior varsity problem set will be used for the remaining kids.

Coaching Session

2005-08-28T10:13:00.000-07:00

Each of our coaching sessions will last 45 minutes. I did some research the past few weeks to determine the best approach to use the time. The tips from other coaches are generally in the line of making the sessions instructive as well as fun with a lot of problem solving activities.

The MATHCOUNTS website provides a coaching toolkit which includes a coaching template. Unfortunately, it is designed for a 60-minute session. So, I decided to modify it as follows:

Coaching Session Template

Minutes 1-5: Warm-Ups. A worksheet with 5 review problems or a math puzzle to orient the students and warm up their minds. The students should be able to start the work as soon as they settle in their seats.

Minutes 6-15: Instruction. We will focus on teaching a single problem solving technique with ample time for students to work together in applying the technique to solve few problems together.

Minutes 16 - 35: Simulated Contests or Games. We will mix simulated contests and games. For simulated contests, we will use a condensed version of MATHCOUNTS with 10 minutes for the Sprint Round (6-7 questions) and 6 minutes for the Target Round (2 questions). This will allow us to finish one typical Chapter Contest in 4 sessions. We can also use this time period for team problems and games. We will start with Chapter contests from September - November and then work on State contests in from December - February. If our kids can handle some of the difficult problems on the State contest, they should be able to do well in the easier Chapter contest.

Minutes 36-45: Wrap-Ups. We will discuss selected problems from the contests and games, give homework assignments, and award prizes.

I will try this template out for September and then adjust it accordingly.

Art of Problem Solving

2005-08-22T01:34:00.000-07:00

One of my inspirations in coaching the team came from a website called www.artofproblemsolving.com (AoPS). While searching for extra-curriculum resources for my son, my wife discovered AoPS in November 2004. Both my son and I were immediately hooked since then.

The website provides the largest online math problem solving community where talented kids learn and sharpen their problem solving skills in a fun and supportive environment. The site is FREE for anyone who is interested in problem solving.

Among many useful forums, I found the MATHCOUNTS COACHES the most instrumental to my personal development. Thanks to several seasoned coaches who frequent the forum, I rely on their invaluable advice and continued guidance in building my team.

Introduction

2005-08-18T00:21:00.000-07:00

I am going to coach a group of middle school kids math in the coming school year.

Our school is a private K-12 school located in California. The school was not very serious about math competitions in the past. However, there are a few students who are advanced in math and want to pursue math competitions as an extra-curriculum activity. I proposed to the school administration to coach a math team with the purpose of building a math culture at the school. The math department was very receptive toward the idea.

In May 2005, Johns Hopkins' CTY organized a regional seminar titled "Educating Talented Youth through Math Competitions and Problem Solving" at our school. The seminar educated parents about the benefits of learning math problem solving and participating in math competitions. It became the catalyst for the formation of the math team.

Now, we have a group of 10-12 largely 7th graders eager to learn problem solving in the new school year and participate in math competitions. Mrs. M, a math teacher at the school, and I will jointly coach the team this year. I am very excited about this new journey.

Personally, I have a B.S. in Physics & Information Science, an M.S. in Computer Science and a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology. I taught at university for a few years and conducted many training classes for businesses. I also taught my own kids math occasionally. However, this is my first attempt in coaching middle school kids. I will be using this blog to share my experiences along the journey.