Welcome to 2012! Please find and download January Newsletter.pdf . The newsletter was also sent through email by the team email: scienceolympiad.cms (at) gmail.com Please add this email to your address book or mark the email as "Not Spam" to ensure future delivery of the newsletter. If you have not received the newsletter, please send an email with "Subscribe" and you will be added to email list.
Thanks. Happy studying!
Matt Sit
Science Olympiad News for December 2011
NEWSLETTER
Greetings! Please find and download December Newsletter.pdf . The newsletter was also sent through email by the team email: scienceolympiad.cms (at) gmail.com Please add this email to your address book or mark the email as "Not Spam" to ensure future delivery of the newsletter. If you have not received the newsletter, please send an email with "Subscribe" and you will be added to email list.
Thanks. Have a safe, fun, and productive winter break.
Matt Sit
Science Olympiad News for November 2011
NEWSLETTER
Welcome to a new year! Please find and download November Newsletter.pdf. The newsletter was also sent through email by the team email: scienceolympiad.cms (at) gmail.com Please add this email to your address book or mark the email as "Not Spam" to ensure future delivery of the newsletter. If you have not received the newsletter, please send an email with "Subscribe" and you will be added to email list.
Thanks.
Matt Sit
Science Olympiad News for October 2011
REGISTRATION
Thank you all for paying your registration fees. I processed the registration for our second time this week.
Both teams will be following the same event schedule on the day of the competition, but it is important to note that because some events are at the same time, you cannot compete in both.
Slot A
Slot B
Slot C
Slot D
Slot E
Slot F
Disease Detectives
Anatomy
Aquifers
Crime Busters
Road Scholar
Food Science
Microbe Mission
Dynamic Planet
Meteorology
Forestry
Water Quality
Keep the Heat
Optics
Fermi Questions
Experimental Design
Reach for the Stars
Rocks and Minerals
Write It/Do It
* Build Events are self-scheduled, but one team member has to be present during the Slot A time to impound your device.
I would like the team to please look at the mutually exclusive events, and change your sign up "wishes" to pick the even you would most like to do. Slot A in particular is critical. Update your changes on the master sign up sheets.
Secondly, I would like one group students to consider some groups of events since studying for one can help with all.
Dynamic Plant
Aquifers
Water Quality
I will be working on the people assignments during our working session on Friday, based on any changes.
Mrs. Enright
Science Olympiad News for September 2011
Updated 9/22/2011
The official rules book arrived in the afternoon mail. I have made copies for team members that I will distribute on Tuesday at our meeting. PLEASE BRING a folder or three ring binder to hold the rules for your events. I recommend a three ring binder with a section for each event you are working on. The first item in each section would be the official rules sheet. (A 1-inch binder should be sufficient). If and when you show me your folder or binder, I will give you a copy for safe keeping. You can bring the binder to school on Tuesdays and Fridays otherwise you can leave it at home, and just add to it as you work on your events at home. Please don't lose the rule sheets; they are VERY important.
Review the plan that was handed out two weeks ago for your ACTION list for September and October. The sooner you get serious about your events, the better you will do. Your binder should be filling up with information.
The details of the events look very interesting. If you are not sure about an event, see me to look at the official rule book. The details might interest you even more.
Finally, please remember to bring a your registration paperwork and fees next week.
Footnote (Matt Sit, 9/22/11): I've prepared a document that should help you organize your binder. Download and print one copy of Binder Documents.pdf per event you are assigned. It contains a title page, table of contents page, a log for your practice tests (so you can monitor your progress), a place to list materials you will need to bring on competition day, and a calendar so you can set your goals and pace your progress. Event assignments will be released at a Sunday afternoon practice TBD.
Footnote #2(Daniel Zhang, 10/4/2011): Here is a website that should provide some useful links (thankfully prepared bu the competition. :] ): http://sciencenc.com/
Updated 9/17/2011
On Friday, the 16th, students received a packet of information and registration paperwork for the team. The registration and check for fees is due by the end of September. Additionally, students completed a survey that will also help with event/team selection. http://tinyurl.com/scienceolympiadcms
If you missed the meeting on Friday, please make sure to come next Tuesday. I will have a few more packets then. If you have not completed the survey, please do so as soon as possible.
Welcome to Science Olympiads! If you missed the informational meeting, download the presentation from the meeting. (Thanks Matt and Monil for creating this.)
Meetings this month: Tuesday and Friday after school from 3:00 -4:00 at the CMS Library. Starting 9/13/11.
Objectives for the month:
1. Review the registration packet with your parents and complete the registration form. (Form and check due by the end of September). (Packet available at the after school meetings.)
2. Review the 2012 events and make of list of five events that look interesting to you. These will be your focus events for the fall. One of the five can be a build event if you like. You will be submitting with an electronic method to be determined.
3. Note important dates on your family calendar:
December 4, 2011 - CMS Preliminary Practice Competition
February 18, 2012 - Regional BARSO Competition - Pleasanton (First day of long break)
Come by room 3 if you have any questions, or send email to mrsenright@gmail.com
2011-2012 Contest Begins
News: Club Day during Lunch on 8/30/11. Wear your t-shirt. Come by with a friend. Bring some things to show off.
The events list has just been released for this year's competition. There are some repeating events and a few new areas. Sadly, one of our super-strengths ornithology has been replaced by forestry. I'm hoping that Daniel can now apply his super powers to the study of trees. The buggy event has been changed to a Rube Goldberg type contraption, and there are a few additions to the Earth and Space Science events. Read more below. Our first meetings will be soon. Stay tuned for the morning announcements.
I'll be enrolling for one team next week so we can get the full book. After our initial meetings, we will see how the teams will form, etc.
Welcome to a new year of Science Olympiads,
Mrs. Enright
p.s. thanks to Matt S. for spotting the link first and sending the information to me.
NorCAL - A Brief Summary of Results
Outstanding job from the entire team. Your enthusiasm, effort, and team spirit were tremendous.
On April 9th, 2011, Cupertino finished in 8th place out of a list of 24 competitors at the NorCal State Final competition in Fresno. The team earned 209 total points. The first place team, Churchill Middle School had an outstanding finish with 95 points, followed by 113 points from Arden Middle School. Clearly those two teams have many years of experience and it is paying off. Third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh were Hopkins Jr. High (BARSO), Elkhorn Middle School, Challenger Ardenwood (BARSO), and Hickman Charter with 139 points, 151, 169, 204, 207 respectively. The fourth team from BARSO, Thornton, finished in 10th place with 218 points. CMS and the rest of the BARSO teams all finished in the top 10 schools, and I know we learned a tremendous amount in the process. We should be very proud of the teams outstanding performance against some excellent competitors. Clearly, we have one of the most competitive regions in the state.
Medals for CMS were earned this year at the state level in the following events:
5th place medals
Awesome Aquifers - Matt Sit and Jared Fernandez
Solar System - Karthik Srivatsan, Subathra Raj
4th place medals
Disease Detectives - Monil Patel, Nikhil Ghosh
Ornithology - Anisha Braganza, Maya Joysula
3rd place medals
Experimental Design - Matt Sit, Ashwath Thirumalai, Katie Luo
Thank you all for initiating this very valuable experience for me. Also, thank you for starting the Science Olympiads flame at Cupertino Middle School. It was your excitement and desire that started the flame that we will burn brightly in future years. Congratulations to every member of the team, and to our expert helpers from the 6/7th team. We could not have done it without everyone: students, parents, Mr. Duncan, Mr. Green, Mr. Esparza, Mrs. Holtzapple, and the organization team from BARSO and NorCal.
We will be meeting soon to plan our party and gather some lessons learned from both BARSO and NorCal. Enjoy your weekend, and your newly found afternoons off after school!
Best,
Mrs. Enright
Good practice on Monday the 4th. Saw good progress on several events. Check how the team is progressing on the event assignment sheet.
Please make sure the complete the permission slips this week (One for NorCal, the second for CUSD). If you didn't pick one up today, please see me tomorrow.
FYI The address of the hotel is
Some of you asked, here is the address of the hotel:
My mapping software predicts almost 3 hours to drive from Cupertino. I'll probably be trying to leave around 5. I'll meet everyone in the lobby of the hotel. (I'll probably enjoy a soak in the hot tub on Friday!) Thanks to Cindy Hong for following up on this.
-Mary
Practice Tests are Required
Please complete at least two tests before next week. Be prepared to show me your results.
We had a great junkyard challenge practice on Saturday. We covered and learned a lot about the challenges and solutions. I read the rules more carefully, and I think we still need to adapt our ideas. Plus I would like to model some of the challenges with Google Sketchup or some other tool before we build with cups/plates/tape etc. Think a bit before we do. I want to thank the parents that brought supplies and a snack for the team on Saturday. We will have more of these. They were great fun!
We have updates on people that might be helping us. We have some resources for the bio topics and Karthik's mom is going to spend some time looking through them for an area to study. Ashwath's mom has discovered a bio flash card environment and can even ask the inventor for some help. Jared's mom has uncovered a grad student from Stanford that might help, and Sitar spoke with a geology professor that will be able to provide tests for our earth science events.
It is great to see everyone putting forth more resources for the team.
Today, Tuesday, is our last after school practice until we get back from Yosemite. Everyone should continue to study and think about our challenges at home. I'm hoping to get everyone started on activities that will take them through the rest of the week.
I just received this link from my sister who is a professor at University of Madison. It is from the University email.
We will be team B11. The schedule and preliminary assignments are posted at NorCal Event Assignments.
I've proposed a preparation schedule for our team that I would like everyone to review. NorCal+Prep+Calendar.pdf This is a first version that I would like every family to review. This schedule includes after school meetings, parent meeting, and a couple of Saturday Practices. Updates will be made on the wiki at NorCal Prep Calendar .
I am going to ask every family to sign a form that ensures that this date is secure in the calendar and they are willing to fully support the team. This might include being one of two to three judges for an event, creating study tests or conducting study sessions with the team members, making hotel and other logistical arrangements, etc.
We have the brains and the desire to get to Madison, we are just going to need step in up a couple of notches in all categories.
Because both Mrs. Holtzapple and I are also supporting the 8th grade Yosemite Trip in March, we are really going to need all the support we can get from parents and other community members. (Mrs. Holtzapple and I talked over the break. She will continue MathCounts on Monday and Thursday per her typical schedule.)
This is out of 18 schools and when you see the scores for individual events, you can see the fruits of your work.
CMS - Science Olympiad Wiki - 2011 Next to Final Posting
Congratulations on a Job Well Done!
All your hard work and preparations paid off. We had an outstanding performance in almost all events. The competition is fierce, but in our second showing at the event, our results were very spectacular.
I did not keep total track of all the awards and the results are not final until 48 hours after the event. When they become available, I'll post them here for you. We had several 1st place medals in events, even more 2nd place medals and a very healthy number of third place results. Although the medals are fun to earn, I really think it is better to focus on the science that your learned and the teamwork that you all demonstrated during these last few months. We had many last minute changes, and I'm especially proud of team members that stepped up to compete in events that they just had a week or so to prepare for. Most of the topics in this event go way over and above the expectations for middle school science so you can be sure you are part of the top tier science students in our area.
Also, I want to thank all the parents and others that helped with judging the high school events, those that spent the entire rainy day with us, and other parents that helped by preparing t-shirts and other logistics arrangements. We had many delicious snacks that the kids enjoyed through the day. I want to especially thank Alan Duncan who came to our team from President Obama's National Lab Day Program that connects scientists with students. Alan is currently working on the "science box" filled with complicated optics for the new James Web Telescope (The Hubble replacement). Alan found the time to meet with our team every week for months and even saved our tower group on Saturday with quick work of this drill. Alan was instrumental in supporting our battery buggy team that won third place as well as our Storm the Castle Trebuchets which placed 2nd and 3rd in the competition. We can't thank him enough!
Stay tuned for the final results postings, and enjoy your week off.
Mrs. Enright
CMS- Science Olympiads Wiki
Sunday, January 9, 2011
I sent home a letter to parents about volunteer opportunities. If it didn't make it to your hope, please download a copy.
I neglected to attach the details of the two events that we are judging: Technical Problem Solving and Sounds of Music. These are two high school events. I am including them here for anyone that is interested.
Please send me email as soon as possible with the way that you can support the team. We are only 40 days away!
Thanks,
Mary Enright
Monday, December 27, 2010
Dear Science Olympiads and your Parents,
I hope everyone is enjoying the break in the action. I have a couple of days with unscheduled time so I thought I would get caught up on a few school things. One objective I have is to get a parents' packet ready for the final weeks of our preparation. When we return I will have a packet of information and requests of assistance with our final tasks. They can include items like writing practice tests, volunteering to judge one of the four high school events we have to judge, taking care of transportation arrangements for the competition in February and finally a form for parents that will volunteer to drive.
We will need all of your help to complete these final preparations.
As we close up the year, I wanted to thank Alan Duncan who has been helping with several events and has taken time from his busy professional schedule to spend an hour to two with us during the week, plus all the time at home. Also, I wanted to thank Mr. Green and his help in the shop with our build events. The teams are making good progress.
Stay tuned for more,
Mrs. Enright
Friday 11-5-10
Tuesday activities:
Microscope with prepared slides. - scopes 4 and slides - Microbes
Optics - use the 7th grade kits. (3 kits)
Bottle Rockets - Mrs. Enright will bring the launcher, team bring the bottles.
Battery Buggy - will try to find the hubs for the wheels.
Dynamic Planet - Study with Jenny and Ashwath
Road Scholar/Junk Yard Challenge - Alex
Update 10/31/10
This week we will meet in room 3 on Tuesday after school, and in the mac lab on Friday after school. If we no longer need the computers and instead it is a gaming environment, let's plan to increase the work time in the classroom. I'll ask for input at the lunch status meetings this week.
We will have our first lunch meeting with the 6th/7th team on Monday at lunch. The 8th grade team will meet to check on status at lunch on Friday.
Tuesday's lab set ups will include:
Crime busters - chromatography demo by Sitar for the 6th/7th grade group.
Shock value - take out basic lights, switches and wires with alligator clips to experiment. Melissa plans to bring a digital multimeter.
Towers - Designs will be discussed, and hopefully, Ashwath has a prototype that can be tests with a few small loads.
Awesome Aquifers - using sand, gravel, food coloring and clear cups the 8th grade team plans on making a basic water filtration system. The 6th and 7th grade team is welcome to observe and duplicate as well. Check out the first lab. AA8 lab 1
Other events should be ready to work away from the computer. Print practice tests, quiz each other with flash cards, or whatever you would like to do to study.
One objective I have is to place our first request for money for supplies with student council. I plan to review the lists you provided and make some estimates of cost. If/when we are funded, I'll set a budget for you and then you and your parents can shop for items. Make sure to either send me an email or post the list on your status sheet. I'll consolidate a list that everyone can check very soon.
Cheers,
Mrs. Enright
Update 10/15/10 - Evening,
Welcome,
We will have our first visit from a visiting/helper scientist, Mr. Alan Duncan on Tuesday. He works at Lockheed Martin and his specialty is optics, and other large design projects. His background is in physics so I'm sure he could help many of our teams.
Please welcome him on Tuesday!
Mrs. Enright
Updated 10/15/10
Second team Registered.
6th and 7th grade JV Team - B 41
The B41 adults are assigned to judge the following two C events
The team met on Friday after school to make the first cut of assignments to events. The group of students was split into an 8th grade team and and 6th and 7th grade team. The event selections will be documented and reviewed to see if we have any event assignments that are mutually exclusive due to event timing. We will discuss issues at our next meeting.
The team will meet Tuesday and Friday after school.
If you have not turned in your your $20 registration, please bring that on Tuesday.
In the mean time spend some time reviewing the events you selected.
Also if you have not completed the survey, please try and do that as well. I will be scheduling a brief parents meeting shortly so I would like to have a complete list of parent emails. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Y2GNFGZ
Thanks,
Mrs. Enright
The team for 2010-2011 is just forming. Students on the team meet twice a week after school and once a week at lunch. As we get closer to our competition, meetings might increase.
If you want to learn more about the team, view the presentation below. Please also review the Team Behavior Expectation. Once you are on the team, make sure that you log onto our team SMS Messaging, and complete an information and talent form.
Submit your entries to this survey to register for the team.
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