Excerpt from this week’s electronic progress report:

Total possible points for Mathlympics 1st 9 weeks was 55. Congratulations to Claire Cashel who had a class high with 52 points. — Ms. W

Each week, Claire’s math teacher hands out a sheet of 5 problems that are part of “Mathlympics”. With the final 9 week progress report, it looks like Claire is going to win.

Most of these word problems are pretty tough. Kathy quickly resigned from the coaching position, and recruited me to be the math coach. Reminds me of when Danny’s throws got too hard for Kathy to help him warm up. Claire and I will work on 2 or 3 problems two or three nights after she has done all of her homework. The sheet is due each Friday.

I help Claire think about the problem and think of ways she could solve the problem without doing the problem myself. Ms. W. provides clues mid-week, but Claire tries not to use those. Instead she works the problem until she gets and answer. She then looks to see if the clue is similar to the way she solved it. We’ve spent as much as 20 minutes on some of these problems.

As the weeks have gone by, she has gotten quicker and better at solving the problem and understanding any suggestions I give. In fact, on this last round, she solved one problem before I even had an idea of what the answer would be. (She bragged about this to her mom.)

From 50 whole numbers, 1 to 50 inclusive, choose the X and Y that will make the largest fraction:

X + Y