Saturday Tournament Results

Over the weekend we had our first tournament at Tappan Middle School. 51 students competed for Clague against students from other schools in Ann Arbor, Detroit, and Lincoln. The team finished first in both average (15.02 per student, 20 is perfect) and Top Five (98 out of a possible 100).
Top scorers (18 points or higher) for the team included: Jiaao H., Wendy L., Shwetha R., Richard W., Topher W., Keeley E., Young L., Valerie P., and Paulina T.
Congratulations to all of the students who participated in the tournament.
Our next saturday tournament will be October 18th at Bates Academy in Detroit. Students need to attend at least three saturday tournaments to be eligible for the State tournament in March.

First Tournaments

We held our first Friday tournament today and the kids did well. Competition was crisp, the questions asked were on point, and for the most part all of the students seemed comfortable with the procedures of the game of Equations. The team results of the tournament are as follows:
Get Smart (Captains Wendy and Patrick) -- 74 total points, 4.63 average
No Names #1 (Captain Jiaao) -- 63 points, 4.5 average
No Names #2 (Captain Graham) -- 52 points, 3.87 average
Next Prime Suspects (Captain Val) -- 41 points, 3.15 average

The two no names teams have yet to pick a team name but will do so in practice next week.
In addition to the tournament, the kids were given an Adventurous Equations worksheet dealing with O wild, UD, SW and !.

We also discussed tomorrow's tournament at Saturday. Students should be at the Tappan cafeteria no later than 8:30am and we will be done between 12:15 and 12:30pm. While at the tournament the students will play three rounds of Adventurous Equations against students from other schools in Ann Arbor, Detroit, Lincoln, and possible Grand Rapids and Jackson. Students should bring paper, pencils, and their Academic Games notebooks with all of the worksheets that have been handed out so far.

Look forward to seeing all of you bright and early!

Exponents, Roots & Captains

Monday's practice included a review of basic exponent rules for sixth graders (worksheet) and a lesson on how to deal with negative and fractional exponents for 7th and 8th graders (worksheet). It should be noted that students in the Elementary Division (6th grade and below) are not allowed to use negative or fractional roots or exponents. Additionally the sixth graders played a practice round, learned about team scoring and began to learn variations.

After practice this year's team captains were announced. Congratulations to 8th graders Valerie, Wendy, Graham, Jiaao, and Patrick. The Friday tournament teams will be revealed on Friday, and the students will pick names for their teams.

Finally, we will have no practice next Monday, September 22. We will have practice as regularly scheduled on Friday, and have our first tournament on Saturday the 27th at Tappan.

First Practice

Over 60 kids showed up Friday afterschool for the first full practice of the Academic Games year. Every new student was paired off with a returning student or two who taught them the basic rules of Equations. After the students had played a few shakes in their little groups they were given a little worksheet designed to see how well the older kids did in teaching them the rules of the games. The new students then went over the worksheet as a group. We ended practice by gathering all of the students together and talking about the plan for the year, and answering students' questions about the Friday, Saturday, and State tournaments. Finally, the returning players stayed behind after the sixth graders were dismissed and voted for this years team captains. The five captains will be announced at Monday's practice.

Welcome

Welcome to Academic Games at Clague for the 2008-09 School Year. We will use this blog to keep all of you updated on practice and tournament schedules, to publicize results from Friday, Saturday tournaments, as well as to let you know what we are working on at practices. When we go to the State and National tournaments, we will use the blog to provide those of you at home with updates from the tournament. If you have any questions or suggestions of things you'd like to see posted let me know.
Thank You, and here's to another successful year
Eric