This past week I ran a Math Olympics event for schools in our area. The event was aimed at students in Grades 6-8. It was the first year we ran the event, and we had 53 students from 5 schools attend!
Students competed in school teams of 3-4 students against other teams in the same grade. We had
14 total teams: 5 grade six, 5 grade seven, and 4 grade eight teams.
The purpose of the event was to get students excited about math through working together to solve various problems.
The event was split into two main parts:
1) Individual Test
Students were given a 20 questions MC test. There was a different test for each grade. Test questions were aimed at concepts and problems that students should understand by the end of that grade.
Students were given 45 minutes to complete the test and no calculators were allowed.
1st-3rd medals were given for this. On the day of, I realized that I needed a way to break a tie since I only had one of each medal. So I posted a bonus question for students to complete when done the test. "If I was born on March 8, 2010 at noon, how many minutes old am I today at noon?". This was intended to be
fairly complicated. The student closest to the correct answer would win the tie breaker.
I think the test was an appropriate difficulty, the average test score across all tests was just over 10, with a range of 18 to 5.
2) Group Problems
The main portion of the day was spent solving group problems together.
Students sat together at a table with their teammates and were given a package of problems and puzzles.
These included puzzles like sudoku, kakuro, or battleship. (krazydad.com)
They also included a variety of word problems to solve (https://cemc.uwaterloo.ca/resources/potw.php)
It also included an engineering challenge. Students were given a variety of materials on their table and had to use them to complete the challenge. The grade 6 teams had to build a 1m tall tower out of noodles and marshmallows. The grade 7 team had to build a catapult that could hit a target 3m away. While the grade 8 team had to build a boat that could float while holding a grapefruit.
Students could work on problems together, in any order they wished. When teams completed a challenge, they could bring it to the scoring table to have it marked. If it wasn't correct, the scorers often brought it back to let them have a second attempt.
There were also 3 stations set up around the room that students could go to at any time. One was the logic game mastermind, one was the computer logic game minesweeper, and the final was a coding challenge.
Teams had 2x1 hour sessions to complete as many of these as they could!
Scoring
Teams final scores were a combination of 3 things:
1) The average test score of the individual test
2) 2 points for every challenge completed
3) Collaboration rubric score- a marker went around for each age group and evaluated their effectiveness as a team (cooperation, communication, and respect). We did this to make sure that the team who won was one that worked effectively as a team!
A large amount of volunteers are needed, I had 15 total. Each school brought volunteers to help run stations, grade tests and challenges, and mark collaboration.
All in all it was a great event and students seemed to have a great time!
I loved seeing the team work and thinking that went in to solving problems. As well as the creativity and unique solutions that we saw to challenges.
If you are interested in running your own Math Olympics, let me know in the comments below and I can share some of my resources to help get you started.
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