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Original poster

Junior Maths Challenge JMC?

35 replies

rinskuro5 · 04/05/2014 13:14

Hi,
my DD is in year 8 in a very good grammar school this year and apparently 'very bright' and gifted with a great sense of logic, but a terrible memory. She gets 100% on school maths tests almost all the time, and does pretty well in science tests too, but badly in almost every other subject -_-" This confuses teachers and me too, but I take responsibility in not really helping her to prepare. Probably because she doesn't bother to prepare for them either...yep.

Anyways, she participated in the Junior Maths Challenge this Thursday after doing a past paper at school and now the answers are out, www.ukmt.org.uk/individual-competitions/junior-challenge/ (here they are, just scroll down) she calculated that she probably got 116/135, as she got question 20 wrong from misreading p and q and missed out 23 and 25 from lack of time, and also because english was not her first language so she hates reading walls of texts. I was just wondering, what are the thresholds for the olympiad, and will she qualify?

I heard it was around 100, however last year it was 113, which is strangely high. were people suddenly smarter last year or what?

dd is weirdly obsessed with the ukmt guys (so much i'm worried) and has since spent her time doing all the past papers including the olympiad questions. She's made me buy all the books (I doubt she understands anything in them though) and she even bought a shirt with the logo on it, telling me it was the mobil belt or something...wat. im confused.

anyway...thanks for your help. DD has better logic than me certainly. I can't even do lots of the questions on the past papers XD

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WarmAndFluff · 05/05/2021 22:17

Zombie thread @Beauty0123...

Beauty0123 · 01/05/2021 15:02

I have no idea but my year5 daughter did it this week and she said it was quite hard for her. But 113 and 100 is a great score for year 5s but it is still excitent for year 7s

Original poster
rinskuro5 · 07/06/2014 19:49

Wow, that's cool.
what a smart guy....

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ThreeLannistersOneTargaryen · 07/06/2014 18:53

The boy who got full marks in the junior maths challenge also got full marks in the maths test used in the selection process to get into the school. I think he just finds that sort of thing easy.

Original poster
rinskuro5 · 07/06/2014 18:33

ThreeLannistersOneTargaryen,
WOAH that's impressive! Was that boy in his math set studying or just really logical? Also well done to your ds, silver is very good. :)

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ThreeLannistersOneTargaryen · 07/06/2014 17:07

DS2 (Y7) got a silver and was fairly happy with that. He is hoping to try for a gold in Y8. A boy in his Maths set got full marks.

Original poster
rinskuro5 · 07/06/2014 17:04

LIZS,
I'm glad to say dd got through to the olympiad round. She might have miscalculated her score as she got 111 instead of 116, but nevertheless she's still in haha. Congratulations to your dd on getting a silver certificate, she's in the top 8% of the country!

Well done to everyone who participated, I'm sure you all did very well.

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LIZS · 07/06/2014 14:38

how did your dd do in the end ? Apparently dd got a silver certificate .

lottysmum · 06/05/2014 23:27

She's just at a normal average comp in Bedford ...but high achieving in take at year 7 ....they have a superb Maths teacher ....i think 10 children took the challenge in year 7 ...most working at level 7b or above...a couple at level 8 including one incredibly bright girl.... I think only 5 year 8 pupils took the challenge ....

HmmAnOxfordComma · 06/05/2014 22:14

Just talking to ds about this and he's insistent he got full marks last week! I would be surprised if he did particularly well as he's great at maths, and loves it but, being autistic, I wouldn't have said the word problems were his strong point! (He's yr 8 but missed it last year, off ill, so nothing to compare to).

Original poster
rinskuro5 · 06/05/2014 22:10

lottysmum - which school is your DD from?
they must be pretty good!

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lottysmum · 06/05/2014 20:56

More Year 7's did the challenge than Year 8's at my DD's school....but they have a very high achieving Yr 7 maths set....DD stated that she answered all the questions (which is a surprise ..not a fast worker) suspect her classmate who is already working at level 8 will score highly ...DD got silver last year suspect probably the same this ....

Original poster
rinskuro5 · 06/05/2014 20:49

You can find past papers and questions on the UKMT website :)

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Original poster
rinskuro5 · 06/05/2014 20:48

My son did it last year and got a silver award, but they don't study for it or practice in advance or do past papers.

yeah, same here.

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Original poster
rinskuro5 · 06/05/2014 20:48

My ds2 in yr 7 did this, he thinks it was fairly easy?!! But is a maths freak! It will be interesting to get the results.

great! Let's see how he does XD

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soontobeslendergirl · 06/05/2014 20:18

My son did it last year and got a silver award, but they don't study for it or practice in advance or do past papers.

This year neither him nor my younger son were selected which I was a bit puzzled about as they are both good at maths, but have now found out that pretty much most of their class are good at maths so they just picked names out a hat on the day - there was no advance warning or anything. It's not a huge school and we currently have exams on using all the halls, so they could only put as many students as could fit in a normal classroom in for it - so they picked two names out a hat from each 1st year and 2nd year class.

5madthings · 06/05/2014 18:53

My ds2 in yr 7 did this, he thinks it was fairly easy?!! But is a maths freak! It will be interesting to get the results.

He enjoyed it anyway which is the main thing. :)

Never knew about the online ones, can you post a link? It's the kind of thing ds2 would like to do.

Original poster
rinskuro5 · 06/05/2014 18:46

115 will be score for 2 missed and one wrong (all at high numbered questions) which is a very respectable score and extremely likely to qualify for olympiad. The UKMT usually put the actual grade boundaries on their website about a week after the contest (and certainly quite a while before the actual results are released).

Oh thanks. but she got number 20 wrong so isn't it 116? because 135-(6+6+7) is 116....just practising my own math haha

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hench · 05/05/2014 19:16

115 will be score for 2 missed and one wrong (all at high numbered questions) which is a very respectable score and extremely likely to qualify for olympiad. The UKMT usually put the actual grade boundaries on their website about a week after the contest (and certainly quite a while before the actual results are released).

Original poster
rinskuro5 · 05/05/2014 15:46

Mentoring at this age is done just through school. There are some pages of old monthly mentoring questions available.

Oh, thanks that was helpful. I'd heard of mentors before and just wanted to check them out - I'm sure DD will enjoy them!

Yeah, she did past papers after the actual thing (not much use in that but the school did give us a late notice). She gets around 2-4 mistakes on each one, so I'm guessing 116 is about correct.

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AtiaoftheJulii · 05/05/2014 14:18

(And school may or may not be interested in the mentoring scheme. My children's schools have not done it.)

AtiaoftheJulii · 05/05/2014 14:17

Not much point thinking of it as a percentage.

If she is looking at past questions then she can also look at the past answers, so can see if she is getting them right/working along the right lines.

If she's interested and enjoys that sort of problem, then yes, there's plenty available on the ukmt site to work on. If she's not really bothered, then there's no point trying to make her prepare. Sounds like she's enjoying herself though :-)

Mentoring at this age is done just through school. There are some pages of old monthly mentoring questions available.
www.ukmt.org.uk/mentoring/junior/

Original poster
rinskuro5 · 05/05/2014 13:13

oh I meant she missed two and got one wrong so lost one more mark than 12%. anyways, it's around twelve

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LIZS · 05/05/2014 12:45

dd reckons that you are deducted more marks for missing out or getting the later ones wrong than for earlier ones. So it isn't as straightforward as 3 wrong means 12% .

Original poster
rinskuro5 · 05/05/2014 12:44

if she thinks she got 116, she's probably through to the JMO. If she finds out that she is, I would suggest having a look at the example answers that are on the UKMT site

When should she start to prepare? Does she need to? She's had a look at some questions already but I don't know whether she gets them right or not. She says they're pretty tough stuff.

The results come about a month after, right? And there's only around a month between the JMC and JMO so would it be better to prepare before she gets her results if she thinks she got in anyways?

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