MathCounts coaches: help me do better

[daijobu]

Hi:  

 

I'm starting to prep for my 3rd year of coaching a mathcounts team.  I will have at least a few students who are 8th graders, so I want to do right for them in their last year.  In the past my team has scored only between 25 and 30 points in chapter competition putting them near the bottom of the pack, and I'd really like to see them make it at least in the top half of competitors this year.  

 

Here is what we do.  We meet once a week.  As homework I have them do an old Sprint or Target round, and grade it at home.  Then when they return, I ask them if they want to go over any problems.  Then I select the most challenging problems and review the associated theorems or techniques for solving it.  

 

The 4-person team meets once a month to do a team round together at my kitchen table, and we score the test and review tough problems immediately after.  

 

I've been doing some of the mathcounts minis problem sets, but I'm not sure how to incorporate them into our preparations.  I'm not really sure what changes I should make to my coaching strategy that would have the biggest impact on our team performance.  The students work so hard, I really want them to do well this year!  

[Kathy in Richmond]

I bet that they'll improve by virtue of having a couple of years already under their belts. :001_smile:

 

Your methods look OK to me. The only thing that I'd offer is that it might help to do more timed rounds at your meetings. When I coached, we had weekly meetings for 1.5 hours.  The general lesson plan I used was to (1) go over homework briefly, (2) do a mini lesson, (3) do a timed round together, either Sprint or Target or Team (Sprint takes long, so sometimes I divided those over two meetings), discuss hard problems, and (4) assign new homework (either another practice round or something else from my stack of materials).

 

Oh, and snacks somewhere in there....middle schoolers are always hungry!

 

When it was closer to competition, we did some quick Countdown rounds for fun together, just in case some of the kids made it that far at Chapter competition.

 

For my mini lessons, I subdivided the year into algebra, counting & prob, number theory, and geometry, (especially the latter three) and chose topics that typically come up in MC problems.

 

A good book that I loved is The All Time Greatest MathCounts Problems. I wouldn't use it in the first year of coaching a group since the problems are tougher, but it's perfect with a seasoned group like yours that's trying to improve. Btw, excellent (instructive, interesting ways to approach stuff) solutions are included.