Argonaut Math Olympiad Parent Meeting

Hardy K. S. Leung

September 24th, 2018

? Slides with be made available at www.argomath.com

Outline

1 Overview

2 Enrichment

3 Competition

4 Extension

5 Conclusion

Overview

Argonaut MO

Argonaut MO

= Enrichment︸ ︷︷ ︸Everyone

+ Competition︸ ︷︷ ︸Opt-In

+ Training︸ ︷︷ ︸More Opt-In

• Enrichment = Based on Math Olympiad (MOEMS)

• Competition = Math League, CaML, AMC-8, etc

• Training = extension

Background

You may want to know that

• I have strong opinion about critical thinking

• I have strong opinion about many other things

• The MO program has been controversial

• The MO program (that I run) has been very controversial

• I have many critics (direct or indirect, past and present)

• I participated in CMSG

• MO is not about crazy advanced math

• MO is not even about MOEMS (later)

• I am adamant that MO works

• Unlike Year #1 and #2, I have proof that it does —• in fostering students’ interest and self-confidence in math• in preparing students’ math foundation for MS and beyond

• Timothy has moved on to middle school (Redwood)

Enrichment

• Math Olympiad for Elementary and Middle Schools

• (MOEMS)

• 6,000 teams, 170,000 students

• Two 4th-grade teams︸ ︷︷ ︸4A, 4B

+ two 5th-grade teams︸ ︷︷ ︸5A, 5B

• Roughly half of 4th- and 5th-graders signed up

• Some 3rd-graders (vetted, highly motivated)

• Person in charge of Olympiad (PICO) — Hardy Leung

• Argonaut MO is more than MOEMS

Enrichment

• Fun, growth, and love of mathematics

• Safe environment to learn

• No competitive pressure?

? MOEMS contests are not considered competitive)

• Unique curriculum based on Critical Thinking

Coaches

Coaches = Parent Volunteers

Suresh Antony Dongni Chen

Marie Eim Yongfang Guo

Garima Gupta Julia Hsieh

Prashant Jain Lan Kan

Vijay Kumar Stephen Lam

Hardy Leung Jin Lin

Ravi Mahadevappa Michael Mao

Bala Narasimhan Aarathi Raghu

Ritu Sharma Johan Strydom

Sophie Sun Ying Xiao

Curriculum

Curriculum

• Pre-2016 — PDF, MsWord, PowerPoint, handwriting)

• 2016 — cmym handouts (Html, MathJax) (∆ ∼ 90%)

• 2017 — cmym handouts (Html, MathJax) (∆ ∼ 15%)

• 2018 — cmym book (LATEX, Asymptote) (∆ ∼ 40%)

? cmym = “Competition Math for the Young and Motivated”

Why?

• I wanted to make some edits, and to kill guess-and-check

• Hard to edit −→ okay, reformat from scratch

• Quality of some of the content was unacceptable −→ rewrite

• Hated Hated Hated printing at the office −→ book

Curriculum

• MOEMS use the same test for fourth to sixth grade

• Anything MOEMS is willing to test, I am willing to teach

• Everything is taught from scratch (assuming 3rd-grade)

• The curriculum is completely based on Critical Thinking

• Shame on people who tell you they don’t have this skill yet

• CT-based curriculum is the only way to teach a diversegroup of students

• some with decent mastery of algebra in 3rd-grade• some struggle with multiplication/division in 5th-grade

• MO is appropriate for all Argonaut 4th- and 5th-graders

Curriculum

cmym has been controversial. Some people hated it.

• Not age-appropriate

• Too difficult

• “Full of typos”

• For elites only

• Why push/pressure the kids so much?

• Why “stuff MO down the throat of our children”?

• Much a-do about nothing (former coach)

Recently, they got replaced by (indirect) comments like this:

• How can this be fair?

Tough. I took the last comment as a compliment.

Curriculum

Chapters of cmym

foundation part i foundation part ii

Multiplication & Division? Ratio

Fractions Speed

Arithmetic Properties Systematic Thinking I

Counting Numbers Systematic Thinking II

Linear and Circular Counting Cryptarithm?

Geometry Logic

Algebraic Thinking I Probability?

Algebraic Thinking II

Curriculum

Some would say that I am completely out of my mind.

Relax. I know exactly what I am doing.

I know exactly how to make it work.

I know what kind of benefit it could bring to students. Mostimportant,

Timothy has moved on to middle school (Redwood)

This means that I am not doing this to give my child a betterchance. There is no benefit but a lot of work for me to continue,and I continue because I know it works, and it has worked, andI am trying to bring the same benefit to your children.

Curriculum

And I know it works not because some advanced materials gotstuffed down the throat of your children. If you have met theMO bunch at Redwood you’ll see what kind of energy theyhave, beaming with confidence, ready to take over the schoolfrom Day One.

They also got to use their critical thinking a little bit more, arewilling to participate in robotics, science olympiad, sciencebowl, and everything else a little bit more.

Curriculum

Sorry a bit worked up!

• One session per chapter

• The curriculum is meant to be taught twice

• 4th-grade — possibly challenging to some (don’t despair!)

• 5th-grade — second iteration should be much easier

• First 4 chapters are challenging to some, trivial to others

• Cryptarithm is a science camp floater — 4th-grade only

• Probability is optional (taught after the last contest)

• I recommend pre-teaching Multiplication and Division

Curriculum

Special Instruction for 4th-graders

• Learn as much as you can

• Be a big kid, and learn with the right attitude

• Don’t whine!

• It may take patience. Prove the naysayers wrong

• Complete mastery of MO curriculum is not your goal

• Do homework, but don’t stress over it

• Some bombed in 4th-grade −→ star students

• (6 out of 25) −→ (21 out of 25), NWEA 99%th percentile

• Some bombed in 4th-grade −→ parents blamed me

• Sent letters to teachers/principals/staff/board to complain

Homework

Each chapter ends with Exercise — Part (A) and (B).

• Exactly 20 problems in each part

• 4A and 4B students should work on Part (A)

• 5A and 5B students should work on Part (B)

• The problems are slightly harder than MOEMS

• Part (A) is slightly easier than Part (B)

• The homework is optional and ungraded

• The lessons are quite useless without homework

• However, mandatory homework got me into trouble

• You’ll get the answer key and solutions — so all up to you!

Homework

I highly recommend doing the MO homework

MO without homework is 10X less effective

Participation in MO is an investment. If done right it will payoff more than 100X. Otherwise it could just be busywork, apoor use of everyone’s time.

Whether a student benefits from MO is highly correlated toparents’ attitude towards MO; don’t short-change your ownchild!

Calendar

month tue-1 tue-2 tue-3 tue-4 tue-5

September — — — 25

October 2 9 16 23 30

November 6 13? — 27

December 4 11? 18 — —

January — 8 15? 22 29

February 5 12? — 26

March 5? 12# — —

May — — 21+ —

? MOEMS contests | # if necessary | + year-end Party

Enrichment

Regular Lessons

• 7:00pm to 8:20pm

• Coaches and students — No parents in the room

• No bathroom break (if needed, let assistant coaches know)

• No outside play

Contest

• 7:15pm to 8:10pm

• Late start (15 minutes). Slightly early dismissal.

• Students will be asked to write their answers on two sheets

• Coaches will review immediately

• Students will know their results — while they still care

Enrichment

• Drop-off between 6:45pm and 6:55pm

• Sign-In by students, Sign-out by PARENTS

• No self-signout

• Please take care of bathroom need before class

• Pick-up at 8:20pm SHARP

• If you don’t pick up, coaches don’t go home

• Please let coaches know of other other pickup arrangements

• Be punctual!

• No parents staying please — highly distractive

Enrichment

Please ask your child to bring to the classroom

• A respectful attitude, a willingness to learn

• Pencil and eraser

• The cmym book?

• This year — no binder (sorry!) — get your own

? when it is ready (not quite)

MOEMS Contests

• 5 MO Contests

• one per month from November to March

• 5 problems per contest

• 30 minutes each

• All students MUST attend all contests.

• Per MOEMS, no make-up, early, or late test whatsoever.

Commitment

The scores are aggregated together for year-end awards,including team awards. Absence or non-participation willnegatively affect the team performance. If your must be absent,please let me know.

No Team Competition

Last two years, straight lessons only. No relay or teamcompetition:

Former MO Student

I like sessions with no competitions. I like competitions, butsometimes the group I’m in makes it tricky for me to share myideas for solving the problems. Not all students in the group areteam players and sometimes they just don’t listen even ifsomeone else in the group tries to show them their method iswrong. They are loud, argue uneccessarily and basically do notlisten resulting in our group missing out on the chance to be inthe top 2 places. This has happened at least 4 to 5 times so far.

No Team Competition

Relay and Team Competition don’t work at all:

We Got None of These

Teamwork, mutual respect, collective learning, teachablemoments, (intellectual) fun, collaboration, correctness,creativity

We Got All of These

Extra sloppiness, infectious rowdiness, free riders, competitivepressure, talk-down (why are you so dumb!)

I concluded that Math Olympiad is not the right forum to learnthese skills; FLL, sports, orchestra, musical, etc. are better

Classroom Behavior

Mathletes need to be respectful of the classroom

• Don’t take anything; don’t leave anything

• Don’t destroy/vandalize anything

• Try to put everything back to its original state

Disruption

• Repeated offenders will be sent home

Intellectural Bullying

• Top-notch students are usually very humble (bigger world)

• Be respectful of others; don’t bully

• I take this seriously

• Offenders could be kicked out of the program

Competition

All competitions other than MOEMS are opt-in

• AMC-8 (November)

• CaML-4, CaML-5 (April)

• In-House Math League (February)

• Outside — π Contest (March?)

• Outside — Math League (Multiple)

Why So Many Competitions?

I offer it as a service

• Some students loved the challenges, and wanted more

• Many became more interested in math through competition

• Because some found passion in Math through it

• Because some realized they can go very far

I don’t expect everyone to do it, nor do I measure the success ofMO through competition — I don’t need to, MO is provablybeneficial to the participants at large.

Competition

The keyword is some

The above does not apply to every student, but a significantportion of the MO students experienced at least some

If competition is not your cup of tea, that’s more than fine, butdon’t take that away from others. Many do have tons of fun incompetition!

AMC-8

Every year a few of 5th-graders took AMC-8

• 2015 1 Achievement Award (Previous)

• 2016 7 Achievement Awards (2 Honor Rolls)

• 2017 6 Achievement Awards (1 Honor Roll)

• 25 MCs in 40 minutes, for students up to 8th Grade

• The most junior version of the MAA contest series

AMC8→ AMC10/12→ AIME → USAMO → IMO

• Easier than Math League

• Questions more well-written, robust

• Less focus on arithmetic sorcery, combinatorics

• More focus on geometry

AMC-8

• AMC-8 is challenging for elementary-school students

• Not appropriate for all students

• I’ll start a separate mailing list on AMC-8 (opt-in)

• Everyone can join the practice squad

• This year there will be a selection process for participation

• Check out maa.org and www.artofproblemsolving.com

• Additional donation requested

Math League

• Many Argonaut students participate in Math League

• Very competitive

• Number Sense + Sprint + Target + Team

• Usually public Math League contests monthly

• Fun, but very steep learning curve

• We will host one In-House ML (Argonaut students only)

• Argonaut sometimes host public ML contests

• btw, Argonaut won the President Award last two years

• (most outstanding school in the nation)

CaML

CaML = California Math League (mathleague.com)

CaML 6= Math League (mathleague.org)

• 30 MCs in 30 minutes

• Similar difficulty compared to Math Olympiad

• Different tests for 4th- and 5th-graders

• Opt-In

Extension

Many students enjoyed AMC-8 very much, and even low-scoringones realized it is within their reach, once the answers wereexplained to them!

I Told Them —

Look, I have something that is quite a bit harder than MathOlympiad, running at 3X the speed, on materials that AMC-8test; this is supposedly not age-appropriate; I will teach itMath-Olympiad-style, asking for the same critical thinking Iasked for. Sign up if you are interested.

Many did.

Extension

Calendarmonth tue-1 tue-2 tue-3 tue-4 tue-5

March — 12 19 26

April — 16 23 23 30

May 7 14 — —

Extension is for students who want more than MO

• 4th-graders — interested in AMC-8

• 4th-graders — interested in AMC-8 + Toga Jr

• You (parents and child) must decide (as a family) whetherit is appropriate for your child to join

Why Extension

• By March your child knows what he/she wants

• Competition math? Regular math? Math pathway?

• Keep the goodwill and momentum going (until May)

• Huge gap between MO and AMC-8/Toga Jr.

Extension

Students will good standing, good participation in MO, anddecent mastery of MO are eligible for extension, including4th-graders.

• Curriculum will be much more advanced than MO

• Same meeting time, similar format

• More rigorous program, more emphasis on maturity, fasterpace

• Good classroom behavior is a MUST

Extension

Extension is neither a prerequisite nor a guarantee for success!?

But They Tend to Do Well

• Academic success

• Confidence and motivation

• Extension students are the most highly motivated bunch

• Dominated Redwood Math Placement —

• (7 out of 8 A2 Pathway)

• (majority of earned Geometry Pathway)

• Dominated Redwood Toga Jr. —

• (15 out of 19 accepted into Toga Jr. in 6th-graders)

Math Pathway

Parents of 5th-graders must must pay attention!

• Do it correctly, smooth sailing for the next 7 years

• Do it wrong, annual ritual of struggle and lower expectation

• Understand math placement and implication

• Last year — CMSG policy

• First controversial, well-received policy in years

• Collaboration between teachers, district, and parents

• 3 advertised and 1 unadvertised pathways

Math Pathway

• #1 = CCSS8 in 8th-grade

• #2 = Algebra 1 in 8th-grade

• #3 = Geometry in 8th-grade

• #4 = (unadvertised)

[#1]—CCSS6 −→ · · · −→ Algebra 2︸ ︷︷ ︸11th grade

−→ Pre-Calc︸ ︷︷ ︸12th grade

[#2]—CCSS6/7A −→ · · · −→ Pre-Calc︸ ︷︷ ︸11th grade

−→ Calculus︸ ︷︷ ︸12th grade

[#3]—CCSS7B/8 −→ · · · −→ Calculus︸ ︷︷ ︸11th grade

How is this Related to Math Olympiad

• I participated in CMSG

• I understand how things work

• I have seen things that cannot be unseen

• I have seen data that is completely contradictory to themain-stream recommendation

• Given the nature of MO, students are poised to do well inMath Placement

Math Pathway

Later in the year (February?) the district will talk about theMath Placement Process. Please Attend

I can talk on and on about math placement. If there is enoughinterest I’ll host a special group chat to let you know all aboutit — let me know

Math Pathway

One thing I know for certain:

Hardy’s Law

If your child wants to accelerate at any all (and reachingCalculus in 12th requires acceleration, unlike the old days),even just a little bit, do not go to the grade-level pathway. donot listen to anyone telling you to build a strong foundationnow and accelerate later?.

? Data shows that it DOESN’T WORK

Math Pathway

Yet, this is still being portraited as the recommended waybecause the students are too young, we don’t want them tobe pressured to learn something that is beyond theirintelligence, and indeed there is plenty of study includingrecommendation by the California Department ofEducation; what happened to the good old days where kidscan be kids, and they are not so crazy about acceleration?

My response is that SUSD data demonstrated the CADOErecommendation does not apply to Saratoga students, if notcategorically wrong, and in fact there is clear evidence that theopposite is true; why not appeal to kids’ inate critical thinkingability to challenge them, to let them thrive, let them have fun,and let them meet the same good-old requirement that thenow-lengthened CCSS pathway could not bring them to.

Year-End Party

• May 21st

• Good food!

• Present awards and trophies to our hard-working Mathletes

• Invited speakers (Mr. Yim and students) from Toga Jr.Math Club

Donation

• Math Olympiad (intentionally) NOT in PTA budget

• The budget is tight but we stay at $100 suggested.

• This year — book is a wild card (?)

• Will ask for more if needed, and please help

• The suggested donation only covers Enrichment, notCompetition or Extension

• I will not run a deficit

• I will not ask PTA for money over budget

• Current PTA President is nice but previous one was (let’sjust say not my friend).

Need Your Help

• Answer my call for help (e.g. the Year-End party)

• Read my long emails

• Reply me when requested

• Let me know if your child can’t/won’t participate anymore

• Help me help you — follow my instructions

• Know where to find information — www.argomath.com

• Be punctual in drop-off and pick up