Hands-on math!

Washington State Math Olympiad
Problems with Hints and Solutions
Suggestions for Classroom Use
How you as the coach use these materials is, of course, up to you. We do, however, have some suggestions.

1. Explanatory handouts
If the problem set you are going to give to your students has references to explanatory material (links are provided in the problem statements and hints), then make some copies of those handouts but don't give them to the students until they ask for them. You don't need a copy for each student. Just a couple that the students can hand to each other will suffice. Many of them are small (like the two in the following example). For those you can copy them 2 to a page.

Here's an example:
2009 5th grade geometry problem 1:
1) The stained glass window design is a rhombus subdivided into four congruent rhombi. If the small angle at point M is 40o as shown then what is angle DAB?

The rhombus handout makes the important point that all the sides are of equal length.
The congruent handout makes the equally important point that all the rhombi are equal size and shape.


2. Problems handout
Hand out the sheet with only the problems on it to let the teams tackle the problems without help.

3. Problems with hints handout
After a certain amount of time studying the problems (up to you how much!) ask if any teams want a 'hint sheet'. Hand out the hint sheet only for those teams that ask for it. If you give this sheet out at the beginning, they might use this sheet as a 'crutch' and not try to solve the problem without direction.

4. Problems with solutions handout
  • Use this to grade the teams' responses.
  • Hand out this sheet to each student to use as a guide to discussing their results and where they went wrong, if any did.
  • Have them include it in their notebooks for later review.