The Los Angeles County Office of Education recently held its 34th annual Math Field Day to promote mathematical reasoning, teamwork and a balanced mathematics curriculum for elementary and middle school students. The competition was held on April 27, 2019 at Glendora High School and drew over 550 students representing 38 Los Angeles county school districts. Of course the South Pasadena Unified School District was capably represented by top local students who fared well in this rigorous competitive math environment.
The competition is focused on students from 4th-8th grade and features 3 main components for each grade level:
1. Conceptual Understanding;
2. Problem Solving;
3. Computational and Procedural Skills.
The first 2 categories test students on team oriented “tasks”. These tasks are a larger problem broken down into 4 separate parts. Each individual part grows in difficulty and is scored commensurate with the difficulty level. Each team is also scored on their level of teamwork for the tasks.
Conceptual Understanding requires students to show their work and demonstrate via diagrams or other written evidence that they can explain why they answered in the way they did. Problem Solving deals with applying academic knowledge to real world scenarios.
Category 3 (Computational and Procedural Skills) is an individual pursuit encompassing 10 multiple choice questions – each of which may have multiple answers. These types of problems are similar to those in standardized tests. All the test materials are based on state and national standards.
SouthPasadenaHomes.com would like to congratulate all the South Pasadena students who participated in this prestigious event. Here are the students (and teachers) who drew recognition as provided by the South Pasadena Middle School website:
“SPMS eighth graders Andrew Jin, Anthony Kim, Jackie Mancera, and Erika Wang earned the Top Team trophy as a result of gold medals in both Conceptual Understanding and Procedural Skills. They also earned the silver medal in Problem Solving.
Sixth graders Joel Kim, Ethan Kung, Emilio Lois and Emett Mendel were awarded the Top Team trophy in addition to their bronze medals in both Problem Solving and Procedural Skills.
Fourth graders Zachary Lei, Isabella Ma, Cadence Ni, and Amelia Shih captured the gold medal in Conceptual Understanding and the silver medal in Problem Solving.
Fifth graders Satya Coleman, Isabelle Huang, Jesse Li, and Eric Shiroishi earned the bronze medal in Conceptual Understanding.
Seventh graders Sequoia Ding, Alexander Ninomiya, Adityan Swaminathan, and Katherine Tam were awarded bronze medals in both Problem Solving and Conceptual Understanding.
Teachers Dawn Tull, Katy Chen, Dean McCoy, and Eric Aispuro coached the students.”
Click here to learn more about South Pasadena schools.
