Transcript for the Math Jam "MOEMS Teachers Math Jam" on Sep 13.

Math Jam hosted by RichKal-MOEMS (Richard Kalman ).

MOEMS PICOS MATH JAM

MCrawford (19:28:24)
Welcome to the MOEMS Math Jam for PICOs!

MCrawford (19:28:58)
For those of you knew to Math Jams, the virtual classroom is a moderated environment.

MCrawford (19:29:34)
At this time I would like to introduce the Executive Director of MOEMS, Richard Kalman, who is hosting today's Math Jam.

RichKal-MOEMS (19:29:47)
Thank you, Mathew, and thank you all for your interest in the Math Olympiads. Welcome to our Math Jam. Let me also thank the folks at AoPS for their generosity and help in permitting us to be part of their Web site. I think this site is well worth investigating for its apparently endless riches.

RichKal-MOEMS (19:30:17)
Our full name is the Mathematical Olympiads for Elementary and Middle Schools (MOEMS). I am the Executive Director of MOEMS, Richard Kalman. I assume all of you are adults who would run the Olympiads and that you fall into one of three groups: you are a returning veteran of the Math Olympiads, you have just joined for the first time, or you are thinking about it. I will try to answer all your questions. Let me begin with a summary of our program and then I will take your questions and comments.

RichKal-MOEMS (19:30:54)
To help walk you through the program, two more informational sessions will follow up on this one, on October 24 (how to prepare for the first contest) and November 17 (how to follow up on the first contest). In addition, six MOEMS instructors will offer 12 subject matter Math Jams examining several past Olympiad problems. The first such session is next Tuesday, September 20. See www.moems.org for our complete schedule.

RichKal-MOEMS (19:31:36)
MOEMS is a not-for-profit public foundation staffed almost entirely by math educators. Created in 1979, it is wholly dedicated to using the Math Olympiad contests to build a love for math, a strong foundation for future studies, and intuitive problem-solving skills among students in grades 4-8.

RichKal-MOEMS (19:31:58)
Our emphasis on mathematical thinking and problem solving is designed to provide students with a strong foundation for their future studies, such as high school courses and SAT exams. With good thinking skills, students can master new topics more easily.

RichKal-MOEMS (19:32:30)
Last year, nationally, over 100,000 students on almost 5000 teams participated officially. With our foreign affiliates and unofficial participants, about a quarter of a million students attempt our problems each year.

RichKal-MOEMS (19:32:59)
Our program is designed around the following ten broad features:

RichKal-MOEMS (19:33:19)
1. The contest format entices students into participating. We try to keep the atmosphere non-threatening since our real goals involve mathematical growth, not winning or losing.

RichKal-MOEMS (19:33:49)
2. Our problems are non-routine and built upon important mathematical principles. Our goal is to strengthen mathematical thinking, not to merely expose students to topics they will learn later anyway.

RichKal-MOEMS (19:34:14)
3. There are two separate divisions, E for grades 4-6 and M for grades 7-8. Although younger students may participate, we do not recommend it because of their greater vulnerability. Older students are not eligible.

RichKal-MOEMS (19:34:42)
4. School teams can have up to 35 students. A school can have more than one team. We do not believe in eliminating youngsters.

RichKal-MOEMS (19:35:02)
5. Every team participates in 5 contests per year; such continuity sustains learning and interest. Forgetting is minimized.

RichKal-MOEMS (19:35:24)
6. Before Contests: To help a team prepare, each team receives 50 past problems with solutions to start, and then 25 more every year. Students know what to expect.

RichKal-MOEMS (19:35:45)
7. After Contests: We include an extraordinary number of awards. Each student receives a Certificate of Participation, about 50% of all students earn at least one award, and about 25% of all teams earn team awards.

RichKal-MOEMS (19:36:17)
8. No traveling is required.

RichKal-MOEMS (19:36:35)
9. Communication is important to us. 8 newsletters a year provide feedback on all contests while walking the advisor through the program. Full and prompt toll-free phone and email responses are available for all advisors.

RichKal-MOEMS (19:37:01)
10. Teams can receive all practice materials and contests and they can report all student names and results either online or through the mails.

RichKal-MOEMS (19:37:30)
Training teachers to teach problem solving is also a component of our program. We offer help three ways: Professional Development workshops are available, we have a book for teachers to train themselves, and 12 Math Jams on teaching problem solving are scheduled for the fall and winter. Further information about MOEMS, of course, appears at the Math Olympiad Web site, www.moems.org.

RichKal-MOEMS (19:38:03)
A transcript of this session will be available for you to review at this site. Just go to the Math Jam page again and click the Transcripts button near the top.

RichKal-MOEMS (19:39:13)
For those of you who missed the beginning, you may want to review the transcript to get an overview of the Math Olympiads.

RichKal-MOEMS (19:40:03)
Thanks for reading the monologue. Now we can begin the dialogue

thiemann (19:39:46)
Am I missing something? I can't see any comments except for RichKal's.

RichKal-MOEMS (19:40:56)
At the start, I offered an opening statement. Now we can all "talk".

C-squared (19:40:27)
I have Lerner's Problem Solving Book. This will be my second year, so I may have returning students (4th, now 5th). What types of problems do you recommend we should begin with?

RichKal-MOEMS (19:42:12)
Before I give my opinion, does anyone else wish to respond to C-squared?

RichKal-MOEMS (19:42:57)
Assuming that some of you are veteran PICOs (Persons in Charge of the Olympiads).

RichKal-MOEMS (19:44:24)
If this is Creative Problem Solving in School Mathematics, it actually is set up as a series of 50 lessons.

RichKal-MOEMS (19:45:06)
Take them in order at the start and then start to follow your instincts.

Patti Phillips (19:43:39)
I've never coached an Math Olympiad befor so any advise anyone can give is greatly appreciated.

andypoulsen (19:44:35)
This is my first year (taking over for a guy who did it for about the last 8 or so) -- I substituted once! So any help will be appreciated!

RichKal-MOEMS (19:46:42)
Using the Contest Problem book is also good, I think, for beginners. The first problem in each set is the easiest.

sbzh (19:45:20)
We are having trouble getting enough students interested in a Math Team. Only one middle schooler expressed interest. Any thoughts on how to generate interest? Also when do you meet - during school, after school? How often? We are a K-12 independent private school.

thiemann (19:47:28)
At our school, the PICOs take different approaches. The PICO for the M team hand-picks a dozen of the brightest 6th graders. I'm the PICO for the E team, and I take any interested kids. I have some super-bright kids, and some who just come for the snacks, or to be with their friends. It's a little more chaotic, but it gives math-phobes a chance to learn how much fun math can be. ... There are pros and cons to both approaches.

RichKal-MOEMS (19:48:56)
Meeting times are up to you. Some do it as a club

RichKal-MOEMS (19:49:28)
Others make it part of the class curriculum.

RichKal-MOEMS (19:51:12)
We have a Forum here, Just For PICOs. It is a message board just for you. These topics are great for the Forum.

Patti Phillips (19:48:16)
We started having Math Team as an elective and generated some interest that way. Students are so busy afterschool and before school that having it as an elective helps. Electives are 2 times per week

raven1 (19:49:02)
Last year was my first year. We had a total of 10 students participating. I used the Math Olympiad Contest Problems for Elementary and Middle Schools by Dr. George Lenchner. Each session I would Xerox one page (with 5 problems much like the contest every month) and have the students work through them together. They learned from one another

C-squared (19:49:38)
I met last year as a "club" after school

RichKal-MOEMS (19:53:07)
Back to generating interest.

thiemann (19:49:27)
How to generate interest: offer snacks, do a team t-shirt, make a big deal of the competitions. Sometimes you have to start small and get the "buzz" going. We meet after school -- the school's support is limited to providing a classroom and funding the pizza party at the end of the season.

RichKal-MOEMS (19:53:59)
I usually found that letting kids take the lead in problem solving hooks their interest.

sbzh (19:49:50)
How do you convince them it is fun and not just more math work their parents want them to do?

raven1 (19:50:35)
We are a 5 -12 independent school. We have a club time once a week. But we also have the kids who do math olympiad commit to a second meeting time (during lunch) each week. A big draw for the girls (we are an all-girls school) was that I brought in treats every meeting time!

C-squared (19:47:45)
I never noticed that it was set up in that way. I know that there were different topics and they began simply and then had more extensions to work on. I guess we are talking about the same book. The problems were great. Are they arranged in a progression of learning or is it okay to skip around?

RichKal-MOEMS (19:55:05)
Either way works.

DKING (19:50:04)
This is in response to c-squared. I found some of the problems in Lerner's book to be too difficult for my students (6th grade), so instead I went through old Math Olympiad problems and broke them down into about 7 or 8 categories. These include topics such as perimeter and area, working with 3D blocks, combinations, etc. This way the students can be exposed to a variety of problems on a single topic. The students would come in and ask "What is our lesson on today?"

RichKal-MOEMS (19:56:05)
Like our contests, the problems in the book range from simple to complex. The variety is huge.

IKufareva (19:51:20)
To sbzh: you will have a better turnover if the sessions will be scheduled during the school day. I will use lunchbreak (kids are allowed to eat lunch right there) and the so-called homeroom period (which is normally meant for homework, seeing teachers if students have questions, and doing nothing).

Patti Phillips (19:52:17)
How do I get the Contest Problem book you are talking about??

RichKal-MOEMS (19:57:12)
Go to the MOEMS Web site. Look under Olympiad Books.

C-squared (19:49:13)
You mentioned a contest book: explain

RichKal-MOEMS (19:59:02)
It is a compilation of all the problems posed during our first 16 years. Dr. Lenchner wrote them all. Of course, there are detailed solutions for every problem, and even hints.

thiemann (19:57:41)
The Math Olympiad book has a Problem Types guide at the back of the book, so you don't have to divide the problems yourself. It's on page 271 of my copy.

judi (19:51:26)
My question is about the actual test. How do you time each question. Why are the questions timed?

RichKal-MOEMS (20:00:24)
The actual time comes with each problem. This allows all students to be on as equal a footing as possible.

thiemann (20:00:10)
You can also just time the test as a whole. I give the kids 26 minutes for the test, and I tell them to use their judgment about how long to take on each problem. Do the easy ones first.

RichKal-MOEMS (20:00:58)
The total time for a test is just the sum of the individual times.

RichKal-MOEMS (20:01:44)
We try to allot enough time for each question so that one who does it by Guess and Check has time.

C-squared (20:00:18)
Because I had both 4th and 5th graders, I required that each table group of 4 had two 4th and two 5th graders. This encouraged sharing of strategies, especially since many of the 4th graders lacked some of the math skills needed for some of the problems. My goal was to have them discuss and come up with a group response.

RichKal-MOEMS (20:03:11)
The reall learning occurs during the discussion of solutions to a problem.

IKufareva (20:00:53)
Mr Kalman, in my school, we have difficulties scheduling the 1st contest (that is supposed to be on Wednesday, Nov 16). First, we can only do Tuesdays, and second, Tue, Nov 15 is the AMC-8 date. Do we have a chance to schedule the contest on Nov 8, 200, which is 8 days before the official date?

RichKal-MOEMS (20:04:24)
If a date is a problem, change it to a nearby date. The idea, within reason, is to get maximum participation and therefore maximum learning.

C-squared (20:02:44)
We talked about the timing for the test and discussed how they wanted to do it. They all wanted the total time as thiemann suggested and then they could work at their own pace. I use an overhead timer so they can easily see how much time remains.

andypoulsen (20:02:52)
re: Rich's idea about letting the kids take the the lead -- what we have done is to divide the kids into groups of about 4-6 people, and then give them the problems for the first part of the time to attemp to solve individually. Then we try to let each kid take one of the problems and solve on a whiteboard for their group (we ask for volunteers so that kids don't have to stand up and try to solve a problem in front of the others if they don't have a clue!) We also provide coaching on the problems during the solution phase, if needed. Then we ask if any of the others had other ideas on how to approach the problem. this allows some cross-pollination of ideas (but I'm sure we can do even better!)

RichKal-MOEMS (20:06:13)
I let groups gang up on problems, and then ask for as many solutions to each problem as possible.

Patti Phillips (20:05:14)
Are the Contest dates posted on the web site?

RichKal-MOEMS (20:07:01)
Yes. The first one is Nov. 15 (E) or 16 (M)

IKufareva (20:06:58)
I am in a public middle school. Can we admit several homeschoolers on our team?

RichKal-MOEMS (20:08:06)
This one is tricky. All members are supposed to come from one school or its feeder.

RichKal-MOEMS (20:09:58)
We do allow "District Teams". Students get all the awards they should, but the team is not eligible for any awards. This only affects a team that would have ended in the top 20% of a category. But then again, this team competes against teams from a single school.

IKufareva (19:53:57)
Are there many schools offering "Olympiad Problem Solving" as an elective? It would be a perfect way to manage it...

RichKal-MOEMS (20:10:54)
I agree. I think such classes are great foundations for high school math and for the SATs.

RichKal-MOEMS (20:12:15)
There are some schools in which every class in a grade does the Olympiads as part of their classwork. They probably offer it as a required course.

Patti Phillips (20:10:57)
Yes, we are offering it as an elective. It's our first year.

IKufareva (20:11:37)
From the web-site, I found out that "Your contests will be posted online one week before the scheduled date". From here, I conclude that Nov 8 instead of Nov 16 will not work, right? Then we are desperate...

thiemann (20:02:42)
In a group meeting, how much time should I spend reviewing basic principles (e.g. learning a particular problem-solving strategy) versus practicing on the problems themselves? Any advice from experienced PICOs?

RichKal-MOEMS (20:15:25)
Some studies indicate that trying a variety of problems is more effective than focusing on one concept at a time. What do others here do?

IKufareva (20:15:18)
What does "no online purchases at this time" on the web-site mean? Can I still register my team(s) online?

RichKal-MOEMS (20:16:54)
We have not yet set up a Shopping Cart with our credit card manager. You can't pay over the Net yet. But you can do all else via the Web site.

andypoulsen (20:15:20)
I'm doing this for a grades 4-6 at a k-6 school, and this year we have no one available from the faculty (I'm simply a volunteer). It looks like we're going to have about 40 minutes once per week -- I'd also like to know what people would recommend as far as how to split up our time...

C-squared (20:14:57)
Same question as thiemann. Particularly with 4th graders who don't cover some of the math skills until late in the year or not until 5th.

RichKal-MOEMS (20:20:21)
For beginning mathletes, it's a good idea to tell them that this is their learning year. Don't worry about getting points, just about "catching the feel" of the problems. Next year they should do all right and the year after very well. It's all about mathematical growth.

RichKal-MOEMS (20:22:32)
4th graders also should realize that they will know more than they think they do, but there's room for growth. Tell them that some topics are for older students (we try not to let this happen, but ...) and their turn will come.

C-squared (20:22:21)
For those who haven't visited the MOEM website, check out some of the PICO hints.

RichKal-MOEMS (20:23:33)
True. On www.moems.org, their are many suggestions and ideas created by many PICOs over the last 26 years.

RichKal-MOEMS (20:25:01)
We mandate time limits, ceilings for grade levels and team size, standard testing procedures, but not much else. There is much flexibility as to how you organize your teams.

JSlupek (20:24:54)
I like the problem of the month. Is there any way to get past problems?

RichKal-MOEMS (20:26:37)
We don't have them archived on the Web. Many are from old contests. Still, if you email the office, we might be able to pull some out of our offline computer.

RichKal-MOEMS (20:27:05)
Are there any other questions or comments?

IKufareva (20:27:15)
I have to leave, unfortunately... Thanks to everyone. Thank you, Mr. Kalman. Is there an e-mail address I can reach you at?

RichKal-MOEMS (20:27:45)
kalman@moems.org or office@moems.org.

MCrawford (20:28:17)
Hi everyone!

MCrawford (20:28:27)
I am one of the admins at www.artofproblemsolving.com.

MCrawford (20:28:39)
I will be posting a transcript of this Math Jam.

MCrawford (20:28:53)
Unfortunately that will have to wait until tomorrow as I am out of the office.

MCrawford (20:29:01)
However, you can see all past transcripts here:

MCrawford (20:29:10)
http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Community/AoPS_Y_Math_Jams.php

MCrawford (20:29:18)
Just press the transcripts button.

MCrawford (20:29:36)
You might forward that link to other PICOs you know so that they can benefit from all your questions today.

MCrawford (20:29:59)
Also, if you are interested in joining the MOEM PICOs forum, either RichKal or I will need to add you.

MCrawford (20:30:18)
Let one of us know if you would like to join.

MathGuy-Moems (20:30:20)
Kudos Rich

MCrawford (20:30:37)
Finally, I would like to thank Richard Kalman for all his efforts and for hosting today's Math Jam.

MCrawford (20:30:53)
And to all the PICOs for showing up to help make their school programs better.

C-squared (20:28:49)
Thanks

C-squared (20:31:03)
bye

RichKal-MOEMS (20:32:01)
Thank you Mathew. A link to the transcript also appears at the MOEMS Site.

Patti Phillips (20:32:15)
Thanks everyone for all your suggestions

C-squared (20:28:36)
Are the two books available in local bookstores, or only through MOEMS

RichKal-MOEMS (20:32:42)
MOEMS.

judi (20:31:59)
thank you

RichKal-MOEMS (20:33:29)
Thanks everyone for tonight. Next Tuesday, Eric O'Brien will lead a math discussion. Good night.

JSlupek (20:35:03)
Thank you and Good night!