Dates for the Competition

Guidelines

E-submission

Samples Challenges
     Junior
      Senior

Guidelines for Participants

The Naturally Mathematical Challenge is intended to be a resource for teachers of the more able maths students The competition provides a monthly opportunity for such students to become engaged in:

• maths activities that are open-ended and challenging, and

• using ICTs to communicate their solutions.

This combination of problem solving and communication is difficult to provide for the students in the everyday timetable, but the gifted students have been found to benefit greatly from being challenged to extend themselves over a time-span of more than one lesson.

1. There is a Senior Challenge, aimed at the top end of Primary (Year 6 - 7) and Middle School (Year 7 - 8), and a Junior Challenge, aimed at the middle Primary Years (Year 4 - 5). The questions will be accessible to all students within each category. There are two challenges per term (4 in a semester). The first three challenges are in a sense the qualifying rounds, and the Final Challenge is the one for which teams qualify to compete for the trophies.

2. The questions for each Challenge will be posted on the Natural Maths website ready for use on the first Monday of a one-week period. In that week, teams are encouraged to answer the questions at any time that suits them and if appropriate, the students should be encouraged to work on the questions at home. The Team Organiser should also set aside a special time for the write-up of solutions.

3. After the one-week period, we will be posting good (interesting) solutions on this website, and so submissions received after that time will be eligible for feedback but not for a place in the Finals.

4. We recommend that there be 4 students in each team to promote discussion. The Team organiser can also choose to rotate the membership of a team, so that if the School only registers, say, two teams, more than eight students can be part of the submission-feedback process. Note that the Team Name should stay the same, as we only send feedback to a team that is registered.

5. Each Challenge, five teams in each category will be able to qualify for participation in the Finals, where teams will be expected to complete the questions, without any intervention from a Team Organiser, within a 2-hour session, including typing up and editing the Word document that is submitted as their answer to those questions.

In summary, teams participating in the Qualifying Challenges are allowed one week in which to:

• solve the challenges,
• write up their solutions in a way that will communicate their thinking, using the See,  Plan, Do, Check model as a guideline,
• convert their solution into a single MSWord document that clearly identifies the Level of Competition (Junior or Senior),  the School and the Team Name. Thus the Tigers from Tarata Academy (which is in our valley) in the Year 4 - 5 competition would send in their solutions as Junior Tarata Tigers.doc
• email their solution to nmaths@naturalmaths.com.au (if using Word is a problem, entries may be mailed, but teams really are encouraged to get into the technology). We are now using Office 2007, and have MS Publisher available if that is your preferred way of sending in solutions.

Solutions will be assessed on:

• the correctness of each solution (30%)
• communication of thinking (70%)

Comments on the solutions will be emailed to the team via their Organiser. Elegant solutions that communicate well (see note 3 above) will be published on the Competition part of this website.