FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
HONOLULU, HI - Did you graduate from public school or private school? Or did your kids go to public school or private school? Oh well, the good news for public school is that the Highlands Intermediate School’s math team placed fourth and the Kawananakoa Middle School’s math team placed fifth out of 32 middle schools competing in the MATHCOUNTS 2006 Oahu Chapter Competition, and are two of the six Oahu math teams that will represent Oahu in the Hawaii State MATHCOUNTS Competition on March 11, 2006.
Other public schools performing well as a team included Washington Middle School in seventh place, Jarrett Middle School in eighth place, and Moanalua Middle School in ninth place. Kahuku Intermediate School was named the “Best New School.” This is the award made to the highest scoring school that did not participate in last year’s competition, and has not placed in the top ten.
For more good public school news Dong-gil Shin of Jarrett Middle School placed third, Sherilyn Tomagawa of Kawananakoa Middle School placed fourth, and Jordan Lum of Highlands Intermediate School placed tenth in the individual scoring out of 226 students competing.
The 23rd MATHCOUNTS Oahu Chapter Competition was held Saturday, February 11, 2006, in the Kamehameha Schools Kalama Dining Hall. Kamehameha Schools have been hosting Hawaii MATHCOUNTS for most of these 23 years, and it is a pleasure to report that the Kamehameha Middle School team placed third, with Aaron Nagao placing second in both the individual scoring and the Countdown Round.
Punahou School took home the Hawaii Society of Professional Engineers’ “Perpetual Team Trophy” for being the top team in this competition. Coach Evelyn Cheong who was last year’s State Team Coach at the MATHCOUNTS National Competition held in Detroit Michigan leads them. Team members Nicole Sato placed fifth, Sarah Loui sixth, and Eric Liaw placed seventh.
The Iolani School team took second place with the outstanding William Chambers winning both the individual scoring and Countdown Round. Team members Scott Sakaida and Anders Lee placed eighth and ninth, respectively, in individual scoring.
MATHCOUNTS is a national math enrichment, coaching and competition program that promotes middle school mathematics achievement through grassroots involvement in every U.S. state and territory. MATHCOUNTS is one of the most successful education partnerships involving volunteers, educators, industry sponsors, and students. With new
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focus on innovation, education to strengthen U.S. competitiveness urged by corporate and
academic leaders, take note that MathCounts has been a leader in this effort for 23 years.
Each year the participation by middle schools (6th, 7th and 8th graders) increases. Each school has a team of 4 Mathletes® and up to 4 alternate Mathletes®. At both Chapter and State competitions, they all go through three grueling rounds of math problem solving. The first is the Sprint Round with its 30 problems, and then comes the Target Round and its 8 multi-step problems, and finally the Team Round with 10 problems solved by the team of 4 Mathletes®. The top scoring individuals move on to the Countdown Round where pairs of Mathletes® compete against each other and the clock. Although MathCounts questions are written with the curricula for grades 6-8 in mind, many of us Engineers would not want to compete against these students. The school coaches prepare their teams like school athletes. Problem solving strategies are practiced along with hours and hours of problem solving.
On May 11-14, 2006, Hawaii’s four top Mathletes® will be in Arlington, Va. to take part in the Lockheed Martin MATHCOUNTS National Competition.
The Hawaii Society of Professional Engineers (HSPE) has sponsored the Hawaii MATHCOUNTS for these past 23 years. Dr. Michael Chun, President and Headmaster of Kamehameha Schools, is the Hawaii MATHCOUNTS Chairman. Continual, supportive major sponsors have been Aloha Airlines and Hawaiian Electric Company (HECO). Every year volunteers from HECO, the US Army Corp of Engineers, ASCE, ASME, SSFM, and SAME help proctor and score the competitions.
Contact:
Ed Chang, 808/623-5910
Email: change025@hawaii.rr.com