By Chandra Wiegand, Grade 2 Teacher
Grade 5 students writing the Beaver Competition.
Analyzing information, solving complex problems, and making decisions using critical and logical thinking are essential skills. At Elmwood Junior School, we offer students a number of opportunities to develop these skills by participating in mathematics contests. Students increase their resilience as they discover that they will need to persevere to solve each mathematical problem.
In October, all students in grades 2-5 were invited to write the Caribou Contest.
Grade 5 students were invited to write the Beaver Computing Challenge in November.
The contests provided by Mathematica Centrum are written in April and are open to students in grades 3, 4, and 5.
Along with writing the competitions, Elmwood Junior School also offers the Fibonacci Club, a co-curricular activity designed to build students’ logical reasoning skills and increase their problem-solving strategies.
Are you looking for more opportunities for your daughter to develop these skills? Check out the links below:
The Caribou Contest is an online educational platform offering math learning resources and competitions. Their goal is to improve students’ problem-solving techniques by providing a wide variety of challenging math activities based on flexible thinking, creativity, logic, and common sense, applicable in the real world. The contests are aimed at students in grades 1 thru 12.
If you’d like to have your daughter Take a Past Contest or try out the Online Games to see what the questions are like, click on the hyperlinked words. She does not need to register or log in to do either of these activities.
To learn more, visit the Caribou Mathematics Contest website https://cariboutests.com/.
The Beaver Computing Challenge (BCC) is from the University of Waterloo. The BCC is a problem-solving contest with a focus on computational and logical thinking. Questions are inspired by topics in computer science but only require comfort with concepts found in the mathematics curriculum common to all provinces. The contests are aimed at students in grades five and above.
If you would like to have your daughter Take a Past Contest or try out the Beaver Computing Challenge Sample Problems to see what the questions are like, click on the hyperlinked words. She does not need to register or log in to do either of these activities.
To learn more, visit the Beaver Computing Challenge website https://www.cemc.uwaterloo.ca/contests/bcc.html.
The Canadian Math Kangaroo Contest (CMKC) is an organization that aims to spread the joy of mathematics. The contest’s main purpose is to promote mathematical thinking and stimulate an interest in math by providing students with an opportunity to compare their abilities against those of other students from different countries around the world. The contests are aimed at students in grades 1 thru 12.
If you’d like to have your daughter Take a Past Contest to see what the questions are like, click on the hyperlinked words. She does not need to register or log in to do either of these activities.
To learn more, visit the Canadian Math Kangaroo Contest (CMKC) website. https://mathkangaroo.ca/en
The Fibonacci (grade 5), Byron-Germain (grade 4), and the Thales (grade 3) competitions are created by Mathematica Centrum. The Mathematics Contest Centre prepares some of the top mathematics competitions in North America. They have designed contests that will challenge and promote the problem-solving skills of all students. Their contests are aimed at students in grade 3 and higher.
If you’d like to have your daughter Take a Past Contest, click on the hyperlinked words. She does not need to register or log in to try them.
To learn more, visit the Mathematica Centrum website https://mathematica.ca/eng/index.htm.