Primary School Maths

How to Participate in Mathematics Competitions in Primary Schools

Introduction
Taking part in a mathematics competition allows students to sharpen their problem solving skills and serves to generate interest for mathematics amongst them. Annually,there are various mathematics olympiads which primary school students can participate in and some of the more prominient ones are listed in this article.

The Asia Pacific Mathematical Olympiad for Primary Schools 2009 (APMOPS 2009) is organised annually in April -May by the Hwa Chong Institution-Aphelion Consortium. The contest held in Singapore is commonly known as Singapore Mathematical Olympiad for Primary Schools (SMOPS).

Awards for SMOPS
Students compete for the following awards in the SMOPS.

1) Top 10 individual prizes, awarded to the top 10 scorers.
2) 3 Honourable Mention Team Awards and 5 Honourable Mention Individual Awards.
3) Top 3 school awards, given to the three schools with the highest combined score of its top three students.

APMOPS 2009
During APMOPS, students get the opportunity to interact with other mathematically talented students from the various countries. Format of the APMOPS Contest
The APMOPS contest challenges students to complete six questions within two hours. National Mathematical Olympiad of Singapore (NMOS)
The NMOS is a competition organised by the NUS High School of Mathematics and Science. This competition is designed to spur interest amongst students for mathematics. American Mathematics Contest 8(AMC 8)
The American Mathematics Contest 8 is the first of a series of mathematics competitions organised by the Mathematical Association of America and is administered by Maths Oasis Pte Ltd in Singapore. This International competition welcomes students who are interested in mathematics and enrolled in grades 8 or Secondary 2 and below to participate.

Annually, more than a hundred thousand students participate in the AMC 8 contest.High scoring students in this contest can look forward to challenge themselves in higher levels contest such as the AMC 10. For success in school mathematics it is necessary to master elementary mental computational skills at first. If elementary mental computational skills are not enough good, a pupil has no chances to understand and master more complicated topics.

We may say that the skills must be driven to automatism (the top quality of skills) which means quick and errorless mental implementation of the simple arithmetical operations.

All pupils who had not reached the limits could not learn mathematics without big problems. 2) The teaching computer program for improvement of elementary mental computational skills. It makes a diagnosis of a level of the skills; carries out the work on improvement of the skills; carries out control by a psycho-physical state of a pupil and by a level of permissible working load; allows controlling the results of working.

For confirming the influence of quality of elementary mental computational skills over success in school mathematics bad achieving pupils (from one to three years after the multiplication table was completely studied) were chosen. The results exceed the limit values of the parameters significantly. It must be noted that the level of elementary mental computational skills of actively working pupils only do not decreases in due course. If a pupil works passively at lessons and does not carry out home works himself/herself, the level decreases gradually. The limit values of the considered parameters define the first threshold of school math's learning ability. It means that results of testing of the skills may be used for prediction of failure in school mathematics.

1) Unsatisfactory development of the elementary mental computational skills adverse affects progress in school mathematics. The skills must be driven to automatism. That is the obligatory condition for success in school mathematics.

2) A level of the skills may be determined by two parameters: average time of implementation of one operation and relative frequency of occurrence of errors.