Clearview Elementary’s Math Olympiad team celebrated the culmination of their competition season earlier this month by sharing favorite memories and presenting awards.

 

The Math Olympiads for Elementary and Middle Schools (MOEMS) is a mathematics competition for students in grades four through eight. The goals of MOEMS are to stimulate enthusiasm and love for mathematics, introduce important concepts, develop flexibility in and teach major problem-solving strategies, strengthen mathematical intuition, foster mathematical creativity, ingenuity and the satisfaction of meeting challenges.

 

Coached by fifth grade teacher Patti Clymer, the Clearview Olympiad team consisted of 17 fourth and fifth graders who met one to two times each week to practice math strategies. The students were invited to join the team based on their high math scores. 

 

The Olympiads competed in six competitions nationally, one per month. Each competition consisted of five challenging math word problems that the students had thirty minutes to answer.

“The problems are very high-level and multi-step,” explained Clymer.

 

During their celebration students shared some of their memorable moments, which included things such as getting all five of the problems in a competition correct, getting extremely difficult questions correct and learning from their mistakes.

 

Along with receiving participation certificates, individual students received awards based on their overall test scores for the season. The top nine students, Evan, Oliver, Marcus, Henry, James, Grace, Jacob, Ailee and Hazel, each received a patch.

 

The top three students, Marcus, Oliver and Evan, each received a pin, and Evan, the Clearview team member with the highest score for the entire year, received a trophy.

 

At the conclusion of their celebration the students shared advice for next year’s team, including “learn the division rules,” “try to use high-level thinking,” and “do your best.”