Boyce students excel in international math competition
Boyce Middle School’s accelerated math team earned the rank of Highest Team Achievement for the fifth consecutive year in the international Mathematical Olympiads for Elementary and Middle School program. Only 84 of the 1,112 registered fifth and sixth grade teams – less than eight percent – achieved this honor.
The team-score is the sum of the 10 highest total individual scores. Boyce’s highest scoring students and winners of the Gold Pin indicating placement in the top two percent of all 86,436 registered students were Bear Bottonari, Phoebe Chen, Sophie Chen, Eden Ma, Alexander Todd, Daniel Wang and Adam Zheng.
Notably, sixth grader Sophie Chen achieved a perfect score of 25 and was awarded the George Lenchner Award, a special medallion named for the organization’s founder, for her accomplishment.
“Loving math the way we do, we couldn’t help but be impressed to find out that this achievement represents 0.25 percent of the more than 86,000 students from the United States and 30 countries!” Kathy Hoedeman, math resource teacher, said.
The Math Olympiads program consists of five competitions administered over the course of five months. Students in grades 4 through 8 are given 25-30 minutes to complete five non-routine problems.
“Though the competitions are challenging and also foster new learning, the best part of the program for our fifth and sixth graders is the shared struggle – the discussions and strategy sharing that takes place on a weekly basis as we prepare for the monthly competitions,” Ms. Hoedeman said.
Since 2010, Boyce Middle School’s accelerated math students have participated in the international Math Olympiads. Created in 1977 by Dr. George Lenchner, an internationally known math educator, the Math Olympiads went public in 1979. Last year nearly 150,000 students from 6,000 teams worldwide participated in the Olympiads. Forty-nine of the 50 states and about 30 other countries were represented.
