UKMT maths challenges - how to?

[justanotherdaduser]

Would like to understand how children who do well in the UKMT maths challenges (junior, intermediate etc) prepare, whether they prepare at all etc

DD (year 8) is okayish in maths - in top set and get usually 85% and over in class exams, but not innately brilliant (in my opinion)

I used to teach her maths in primary, specifically for 11plus preparation, but have stopped since end of year 6.

The teaching in class is focused on breadth first, quickly moving from one topic to another, not spending enough time on any one topic to develop deeper understanding. I think the school aims to iterate over these same topics repeatedly for the next few years before GCSE.

For example, I think most of the class can solve simultaneous equation of two variables, but will probably struggle with a third variable and likely to struggle with a complexly worded problem where sentences may not easily be translated into simultaneous equations.

So DD struggles with the UKMT challenges - about the first 50% of the questions are doable, she finds the later half harder.

I feel there is benefit in doing these papers - encourages out of box thinking, helps in developing much deeper understanding of the topic, builds resiliency etc. I am encouraging her to do them seriously (school makes all top set students take the UKMT challenges), but also conflicted that maybe I shouldn't push too hard because unsure whether these problem solving skills are meant to come naturally.

Question is - if your DC does (or did) well in these challenges, did they prepare specifically for such types of questions? Or was school work enough for them to do well?

We haven’t prepared DS for it. Nor did we last year.

Thank you.

Was your DS solving similar questions for a while as part of school work/homework, or maybe on his own initiative?

Or did he just take the exam on the day?

He didn’t do very much prep work in terms of homework and from what I’ve since seen of his school work nor did they do any in school. He is naturally gifted though and maths is his strongest subject. He came out with a gold award (he’s year 8 this year).

If you want to prepare the past papers and answers are online on the site. This is to up confidence with the format. My boys both gifted at maths were encouraged to do the challenges in state schools from the earliest they were allowed to, and I think one was given papers in primary to practise with because he was always years ahead so they had to engage him somehow and it is quite playful stuff (the latter question) so it would keep him busy. They seemed to give him stuff from other sites too, something like Nrich. There must be way more out there now.

DD struggles with the UKMT challenges - about the first 50% of the questions are doable, she finds the later half harder

Talking about UKMT Junior Maths Challenge, to get Gold certificate in 2023, she would have needed 82 marks which is equivalent to getting correct the first 15 questions that score 5 marks each and a couple of harder questions 16-25 worth 6 marks each.
So if your daughter gets the first half of the questions correct without any extra preparation, well done her!

thank you, yes, their website is very useful.
Also Dr Frost has a superb UKMT section.

Never did anything with DS1. He gets a bronze or silver each time. We threw a previous paper DS2's way when the teacher mentioned it. He came top in year, and progressed to the Kangaroo.

This year (Y8) DS2 wants top in school. Parallel (on line) usually has lots of maths challange style questions. He also did the first half of his brothers intermediate paper earlier this year.....
But nothing specific done. The end questions are meant to make you think!

thank you, that made me feel better 😀

Have to admit, some of the later questions, somewhere around 20 to 25 are quite tricky even for grown ups! I am not a maths teacher, but have two degrees in maths adjacent areas (applied) and spent over an hour yesterday trying to solve the later questions 😂

Kudos to the children who excel in these type of problem solving.

If anyone else is wondering about this, I came across a maths tutor blog post here 'UKMT Maths Challenge – benefits for pupils and tutors'

It convinced me the challenges are worth spending some time on for DC -

https://rickanderson.co.uk/ukmt-maths-challenge-benefits-for-pupils-and-tutors

thanks for that, haven't seen Parallel before. Will take a look

One thing I do remember is that girls often do better in Year 9. I think that is when they introduce the negative marking (dedications for wrong answers) (can’t quite remember though). So it sounds to me like your DD is more along those lines, careful, accurate and actually doing quite well.
At the top end of the Senior Olympiads the top performers are obviously both very accurate and excited by investigations.
I think at this stage if she enjoys some investigative maths and attempts some of the harder questions that is good. For GCSE, being accurate and in top set will obviously get you a 9 anyway. It is more relevant for the beyond and so even the early stuff has to include hard questions for the top mathematicians.

I think this is important, she has to enjoy it. That’s one of the reasons we don’t push DS. He enjoys the challenge but if it became something he had to perform well at he’d lose his enjoyment.

In your shoes I would look into the maths circles programme.

This is about depth rather than breadth and is good.

mesme.org/online-maths-circles/

These are one of the people who do it,

The book Moscow maths circles is also good for challenge style problems and more helpfully solutions.

Parallel also run maths circles.

thank you. Haven't come across math circles before, what a brilliant idea!
Will also take a look at moscow math circle book.

Got a number of very good pointers in this thread. Thank you all

My DD got a Silver on the Junior Challenge last year... she did no practise at all...

My DS has never really prepared, I think he may have looked at one past paper online or similar from previous challenges - as school used to say they could do this, but he's very lazy - but used to get Gold.

Got Silver this year, think probably because he would have been the youngest in a more difficult competition. He is naturally very strong in maths and problem solving but, at the same time, have kids not been taught certain things they won't necessarily know how to apply or solve some problems.

The ones that seem to fly at his school are from families where I know they do a lot of maths quizzes at home (parents who did maths or similar at uni so lots of discussion/involvement), maths circles and similar. So they may say they're not preparing but essentially that is all prep for this for sure!

I've noticed that certain cultures place a very heavy emphasis on maths/science and I find they tend to do quite well. Flip side is that many of them don't seem to have much of a social life nor sports or similar as extracurricular activities. I guess it's a balance and we choose what we think is best for our children.

Does anyone know what percentage get gold, kangaroo and jmo?

My reading is:
25% Bronze
16.6% Silver
8.3% Gold
"Several thousand" to kangaroo
1200 JMO

Kangaroo works slightly differently for IMO - the qualifying score varies by School year. I think for JMC it is one mark for all tho.

DS qualified for the Olympiad and yes, we did prep him with going through practice papers and books. He now has an offer for a maths school for sixth form, so well worth it.

If it were a sports or music competition, it would be obvious that kids should practice. I find it a strange attitude that clever kids should be able to do their best without practice. David Beckham got to be an amazing footballer through lots of practice, the same for any musician.

Aptitude + training are a winning combination. The training is essential to reach potential.

Reaching the Olympiad is a tremendous achievement. Congratulations to your DS. You must be so proud.

Completely agree with your point about need for practicing and sharpening skills.

There are plenty of maths (story) books that the children can read. These books aid in achieving a profound comprehension of mathematics. Only practising past papers without understanding wouldn't greatly assist in studying mathematics. Despite not engaging in extensive practice, because of reading lots of books at an early age and then watching a lot of YouTube maths videos later, DC can still achieve top marks in the Olympiad stage.

100% agree that similar to other olympiad competitions, to reach the IMO level one need to do training in additional to aptitude, just one or the other is simply not enough.

DD10 had done many of these at all levels over the years. She does do some practice, some years more than others. School work is never enough.

Both mine did very well at these and got into Olympiads - DD got invited to their summer school and did a Harvard-MIT maths comp. We did get some of the things from the UKMT website. They both started the senior comp in y9. DD had an offer from a maths school which she didn't take up but was a great school, just too far from us. They do need thinking skills as well but practice helps. DD also just got an Oxford offer for a subject which you need maths for.

DS's maths teacher told us to buy "intermediate problems" from the UKMT website.

We did, but then we lost it. I am not coaching DS for the maths challenge exams. We're working on chilling out and being human, mostly.