Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Winter Break Status update

Hello All,

Hope everyone is having an enjoyable winter break.  I wanted to provide a little status update.  When practice resumes next week, we will begin preparations in earnest for the State tournament in March.  I will email a letter later this week providing details for the tournament.  The cost per student this year for the tournament will be $335.  This includes registration, room, board, meals, and transportation to and from the tournament.  We will have limited scholarship money available.

Some important dates coming up in early January:
Saturday January 11 - Saturday tournament
Monday January 13 - Linguishtik worksheets due.  Presidents and Propaganda questions from 8th graders due.
Friday January 17 - State tournament money and health form due
Monday January 20 - No practice
Tuesday January 21 - Special practice, State tournament teams announced.

Please note we also have an Academic Games sponsored fun night coming up (more details coming really soon).  This is our big fundraiser for the year, and we ask all Academic Games parents to volunteer at the Fun Night.

I will post some info detailing the Propaganda techniques we learned before break and some that we are going to learn right after break.  I have also posted a set of Presidents worksheets on the right.  No points will be awarded for these, but they are a very useful study tool.  I would also recommend everyone take a look at AGLOA.org, the official national AG website.  They have a section called online learning that has both Presidents and Propaganda quizzes.

Only 64 more days until States!

Monday, December 16, 2013

Challenge Match results

By request, the results of the challenge matches:

We Love Pi 3.94
Bob Lee's Pizza Delivery Service 4.07
Rated Ag-13 4.25
Raisin Brains 3.80

As a result, every member of Rated Ag-13 who was present tonight will get a 6 added to their Friday tournament scores, Bob Lee's players will get 4s, We Love Pi 3s Raisin Brains 2s.

Last practice of the year on Friday.  We will play another round of Ling, our usual Presidents Progression and maybe start learning Propaganda.  Reminder that On-Sets worksheets are due on Friday.

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

A group of collective nouns

I came across this great list of animal congregations and thought it might be of some use to our budding Linguishtik players.

Also, the Elementary Ling packet has been posted on the right.  Although it is not due until after winter break, it would be very helpful to print out the worksheets as we learn all of these things in practice.  Middle Ling packet will be posted this coming weekend.

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Late November Updates

Hello All!

Just a quick note to provide some updates on practices, tournaments and worksheets.

Equations worksheets were turned in by the students on Monday.  For the most part, I was very pleased with the time and effort the students put into the worksheets.  I told the students at practice that I think that these worksheets might be the single hardest thing we do in AG, so I was very proud of their work.  Most students turned in worksheets.  Over half the students got ten or more sheets completed with at least a third of the students getting the maximum number of points.  I will check off points for the students and return the worksheets Monday next week.  I would encourage kids to keep working on the worksheets if they didn't complete all of them, and to save the worksheets to study from for future tournaments.  I have posted the answer key for the worksheets in the right sidebar so that each student can check their own answers.

I have also posted the On-Sets worksheets on the right.  These worksheets are considerably easier than the Equations worksheets, I believe, and there are fewer of them.  Any student can get up to ten points for completing these worksheets, and they are due before winter break (our last practice is December 20).  Although we won't spend as much time in practice working on these worksheets as we did with the EQ worksheets, I would still encourage every kid to print them out and bring them to each practice.

Our mini-Presidents tournaments are going well.  As many of you may know, on Fridays after our cube game tournament, we have been reading five Presidents questions, keeping score for everyone, and tracking the average Presidents score for each grade.  As you might guess, the eight graders have the highest overall average, but the 7th graders have been closing the gap, and the sixth graders have been as improving as well.  To improve Presidents scores, I would recommend every student find a good book about the Presidents, or a good digital source of information, and spend at least 10-15 minutes per day reading and / or studying that material.  You can find good, cheap Presidents books at most bookstores (they still have those?), or on Amazon.  There are a host of Presidential trivia apps you can get for either an IPhone or an Android based phone.  And you can find Presidents quizzes on the national Academic Games website (agloa.org).  I will also post some Presidents worksheets that can be used as study guides a little later in the year.

Finally, we have begun learning our fourth game, Linguishtik.  A game that tests students' vocabulary, and their knowledge of English grammar, many students struggle with the game when we first learn it because those are subjects that aren't taught very much in school.  I told them to imagine what it would have been like to learn Equations with knowing how to subtract or multiply.  I told them not to get discouraged, and to make sure they take good notes when they are learning.  I will post some Linguishtik worksheets which contain a lot of lessons within them sometime before next Monday.  Those worksheets will not be due until after we return from break in January. 

So much for this being a quick note (!)  Hope you are all having a good Thanksgiving break - eat lots of turkey (or tofurky if you prefer), watch some parades or some football, and maybe study some Pres ;-)

Monday, October 14, 2013

Equations Worksheets

Equations worksheets are linked on the right. There is a packet for Elementary players (6th graders) and one for Middle players (7th and 8th grade). We will not be printing out the worksheets, so it is up to each student to print them out on their own. Worksheets are due before Thanksgiving break.

For every page completed, students will get one point added to their Friday tournament score, regardless of the number of problems they get correct. The idea is to reward effort. Students are encouraged to bring their worksheet packet with them to all practices, as we will often have times when they can work on them with other students.

6th and 7th grade students can get a maximum of 20 points from the worksheets, while 8th grade students can get points for the worksheets that deal with variations that are new this year, specifically worksheets 7O, 7P, 7Q, 8A, 8B, 8C, 8D, 8E, 10C & 10D.

Monday, September 30, 2013

First Saturday Tournament

64 Students from the Clague AG team participated in the first tournament of the year this past weekend, a warm-up tournament held at Clague.  189 students from 7 different teams participated in the event.  Clague finished the tournament with an average of 14.09 per player, good for second in the tournament (first place was 14.57, third place was 13.89) and with a Top Five of 94 (perfect is 100), also good for second place (first place was 96, third was 83).

Top scorers from the Clague team included:
Tao C.
Carmen G.
Joseph L.
Zach N.
Eileen S.
Allen W.
Grace Z.
Kristine Z.

Congrats to all the Clague students for a good start to the season.  Our next tournament is October 19 at Huron High School.

Friday, September 27, 2013

First Saturday tournament

Dear Friends,

Just a quick note to remind everyone that our first tournament is this weekend at Clague. To participate, students need to be at Clague no later than 8:30 saturday morning with pencil, paper, and their AG notebooks. When they enter the cafeteria, they will find the sign-in sheet for Clague students, and will then have about an hour to practice with teammates and get ready for the tournament. Around 9:30 we will move all students out into the lobby so we can set up, and will then bring everyone back in to start the tournament around 10am. The students will play three 35 minute rounds against students from other teams from Ann Arbor, Jackson, Detroit, Northville, Dearborn and other cities. The tournament will be over between 12 and 12:30.

Parents are welcome to attend, although we ask that parents not talk or communicate with the students during the competition. Good Luck to all our students Eric

Friday, September 13, 2013

Captains for 2013-14

Congratulations to our Captains for 2013-14
Grace Z.
Justin L..
James R.
Eileen S.
Shivani J.

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Clague AG 2013-14

Welcome Back,

I hope everyone had an enjoyable and restful summer vacation. Academic Games begins for all interested students begins this Friday Afternoon from 3-5 pm. Our practice schedule will remain the same this year as it was last year, Mondays 7-9 pm, and Fridays after school until 5pm.

Our first Saturday tournament will be September 28th at Clague. A complete schedule is posted to the right, and is included in the Welcome Letter that is also posted on the right. Please make sure to complete the registration form attached to the welcome letter and bring it with you to your first practice.

As we did last year, we would like to put a call out to all of our AG parents out there.  As the wide range of talented students on our team suggests, we have a myriad of gifted parents among our AG group.  And as the recent success of parent run teams at both King and at other schools throughout the league shows, one need not be a lifetime Academic Gamer in order to be a successful coach (or co-coach). 

So if you have an interest in learning any of the games, or have already learned some of them and enjoy playing them, and if you have lots of patience, good communication skills and a good sense of humor, and are generally available Monday evenings or  Friday afternoons, please let me know. 

If you have any questions or concerns about any of these items, please feel free to email me (ericnelsonag@comcast.net)

Thank for your support,

Eric

Friday, January 4, 2013

AG in the the new year

Hello All,

We hope everyone had a peaceful holiday season and a happy new year.

A few important dates and bits of information for you:

January 12 - Tournament at Adler Elementary school in Southfield.  Remember, students need to attend three saturday tournaments to be eligible for the State tournament.

January 18 - Academic Games Fun Night - Our biggest fundraiser of the year. All parents of students expecting to attend the State Tournament are expected to volunteer.

January 18 - State tournament money and preliminary paperwork due. The cost will be $325 per student. We will have scholarship money available. More information about this tournament is posted on the right under worksheets, as well as the health form that needs to be signed and returned with the money for the tournament.
February 9 - Tournament at Crockett Academy in Detroit.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions

Eric

Linguishtik Worksheets

The Lingushtik worksheets are posted on the right.  Please note that they have been revised from last year's worksheets to fit the change in Linguishtik rules at the State level.  They are due on or before Monday, January 21. All students can get up to twenty points for completion of worksheets, although total worksheet points from all games is limited to thirty.