Math Olympiad

Math Olympiad is a program designed for enhancing a student's problem solving skills through math problem solving contests. This is an enrichment activity for our 4th and 5th grade students and is by invitation only. Students were selected using last year's in-school and standardized assessments. Students will meet weekly before school to practice skills and review problems with the program advisers. The program starts in October and runs through March. Within that time frame, there are 5 problem-solving contests. Each contest consists of 5 problems. This allows each participant to score up to 25 points during the course of the competitions. However, the program goals are not simply to score the most points.

Program Goals

Math Olympiad desires to:

• Stimulate enthusiasm and a love for Mathematics

• Introduce important Mathematical concepts

• Teach major strategies for problem solving

• Develop Mathematical flexibility in solving problems

• Strengthen Mathematical intuition

• Foster Mathematical creativity and ingenuity

• Provide for the satisfaction, joy, and thrill of meeting challenges

Practices

Tuesday afternoon sessions are designed to review the practice sheets and discuss strategies that can be used to solve the problems. We will hold practices every Tuesday afternoon beginning at 3:45 PM. Students will remain after school and can be picked up at 4:50 PM. Please be advised that if there is ever an early dismissal due to inclement weather, Math Olympiad will be canceled for that day. Any scheduled competitions will be made up at the next regularly scheduled session.

Competition Dates

This years official competition dates established by the program are: November 14, December 12, January 16, February 13, and March 6. We will compete during our practice on those dates.  However, students who miss a competition are unfortunately unable to make it up; they will automatically receive a 0 as their score for that competition.  (Sorry! It’s the program’s rules, not ours.) 

Parent Help

We can use our parent support in three ways:

1) Pick up - Please be prompt (4:50 PM) to get your students on time on Tuesdays after practice.

2) Snacks - It is a long school day, having parents help us by providing a snack goes a long way to keeping our brains working. (Link coming soon)

3) Homework - Give advice and work with your student, but do not solve the problems for them. It is okay to struggle at times.