It’s almost time for the SchoolPlus Kangaroo Olympiad training classes to start, and we would like to tell you something about what exactly goes on in an Olympiad training class and what you can expect.

The Olympic training classes will acquaint students with some general and specific “guideposts,” they can recognize to help them “find their way around,” and solve the problem.

Here’s what we’ll do in a typical class

Practice reading and verbalizing problems to understand exactly what’s being asked for. Very often, the mistake in a problem occurs at the start, because a student didn’t read the problem carefully.  The students will be trained to absolutely “nail down” what they are going after, and sometimes that is subtle.

Kids will present and share their ideas for how to solve the problem, and comment on others’ work.  It’s important to see different ways of doing a problem and also important to talk about why a certain approach didn’t work out.

• Presentation by teacher of a variety of problems that utilize a specific technique but in sharply varied settings.
• Group work by students to implement these techniques themselves, and individual work, with teacher’s critique.  Practice with actual Olympiads.
• Homework consisting of similar problems to solve.  Answers will be provided for parents to help.

There are some specific “categories” or types of problems, which when recognized, make a complicated problem a lot more sensible and manageable.  Some well known techniques in problem solving, which will be studied in the classes include solving a problem by “Working Backwards,” i.e., you know the final result, but you must figure out what steps got you to that point. The skill of “Making A Picture or Sketch,” to simplify complex information is another valuable approach. Other classic problem solving techniques include “Looking for a Pattern,” and this includes both picture and number patterns, “Organizing and Listing Cases,” to list a few of the techniques we’ll study.        Solving an unfamiliar math problem with no guideposts is comparable to finding yourself lost in a strange neighborhood, with insufficient directions, just hoping you make it out.  We think the techniques and approaches we’ve described will help.