New to Science Olympiad or have any questions?

[Jonathan Benskin]

Good morning, 

My name is Jon Benskin and my wife and I co-coach the Boca Raton Community High School Sci Oly teams. I wanted to introduce myself and offer teams any help we can offer. If you are wondering about how to start a team, run multiple teams, attend invitational tournaments, or have any event-specific questions, please let me know. I might not directly have the answer to all questions, but I can almost certainly find someone that does know. I think this Google Group is a great way to share information and ideas. 

As a classroom teacher, I completely understand the difficulty of running a Science Olympiad program this year but we would encourage you to reach out if you are in need of help or are concerned with starting/maintaining a program.

It is nice to virtually meet you all and hope I can be of some help! 

[Cristi Sims]

I have a group of students interested in forming a team but I know nothing- any help is greatly appreciated!!! I can't even figure out how to get the rules! LOL! How do I reach you?

Thanks in advance!

Cristi Sims

[Jonathan Benskin]

Thanks for joining! You can find the rules here: https://store.soinc.org/us/page/manuals

This will be a great place to start. Teams are 15 people that compete in the events (on average, students are each in 3 events if you plan to participate in all of them). Start by gauging student interest- as in, which students are interested in which events. Look up the tournaments in your state, and make sure to register your team(s). Just these few things are a great place to get started!

[Madhuritha Sayana]

Is it Mandatory to attend all events? or we can choose which events to attend? and how does it effect the overall team spirit and score of the team?.

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[Ahmed Shahid]

It’s not mandatory to attend all the events. However, if a team does not participate in a event then it gets a score of no of teams participating +1 in that event. For eg. if there are 60 teams participating in the event and your team finishes 10th in the event then your team score for that event will be 10. If your team does not participate in that event then your team score for that event will be 60+1= 61. 

As you know sum of all 23 events decides the team total. The team with lowest score is the winner and the other teams are ranked in the order of the team total. 

Individual team members will not be affected by not participating in an event. However, overall team will be ranked higher. It’s best to participate in every event if you want to move past the regionals. 

Sent from my iPhone

On Nov 19, 2020, at 10:42 AM, Madhuritha Sayana <madhur...@gmail.com> wrote:



To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ScienceOlympiadCoaches/CAMiEumbjSMXp8km6n9DJT%2BucYG%3DiEdzyRKH7T4_Mx5vRc42FWw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Elizabeth McCord]

I would be glad to help.  I ran a team out of my house for 4 years, middle school.    I have xcel spread sheets for organizing kids into events...

I am not sure how to contact you privately outside this forum.

[Keshia Stiles]

Hi! 

I was just hired to coach and have no idea what I am doing yet! 

How often do you usually meet and for how long? And what do you usually do at your virtual meetings?

I am going through the website now looking at the events that are offered this year so that I can prepare something for the kids who are interested in joining. 

Thank you!
Keshia

On Thursday, October 29, 2020 at 4:02:38 AM UTC-7 Jonathan Benskin wrote:

[Jonathan Benskin]

Thanks for the post. We are only allowed to meet virtually and for us, there is not necessarily a whole lot to cover in a virtual meeting unless there is a competition coming up. Students are encouraged to work with each other any way that will work for them (Facetime, etc). You can create a simple Google From that interested students can complete. This form can have their basic info on it and they can also let you know which events they are most interested in. Just some initial thoughts. Do you have more than 15 interested?

Thanks

[Joanna MacDonald]

I don't know if what we are doing is effective, but this is what we have been doing.....

We can only meet virtually also. We meet on Fridays for a little over an hour. I created breakout rooms for each event. Then I created a Google Sheet so students could sign up for the event that they will be working on for the meeting. I've gotten quicker at assigning students to breakout rooms, so I can do 40 students in a couple minutes, but I tell them to go ahead and get themselves organized while they are waiting for the breakout rooms to open.

During the meetings, we have been unpacking the rules and sharing resources. I will pop into some of the breakout rooms and provide resources and explanations. I have an assistant that will do the same in some of the other rooms. Most of the preparation done for the events is done collaboratively between the partners on their own. I have them create a Google Doc where they share websites with an annotation of what it has on it and how useful it is.

Occasionally, I will use a Google form to check in with them to see what resources/help they still need, how well they are collaborating with the partners, which events they feel most confident and least confident with.

For the build events, the students are working on their individual devices (since they cannot get together) and we will probably choose the one that works the best to create the practice logs for. I envision the practice log being made collaboratively with one student using the device while the other one documents the runs.

Frankly, a lot of the material is beyond what they would learn in a normal science class, so they do have to do a lot of it on their own.  I do not have help from my department, nor do I have alumni that come in to help, unfortunately. If you can get that, it would be a huge bonus.  I do have a couple of parents who are a huge help. I find myself more in charge of the logistics and record keeping.

I don't know if any of the invitationals still have openings, but if you can do the Dec practice with the Scilympiad platform (not sure if its full too), it would be helpful so that your students are comfortable with how their regional olympiad will go... Ours is a Mini :(

Good luck!

[Erika Wunderlich-Hite]

Hi, I am also a new coach of a new team and my question is, I keep seeing references to permission slips and release forms (we are competing in a practice tournament this month). I have combed through the websites many times and I can't find examples of either document. Can anyone point me to them, or are they created by the coaches/schools?

Thanks!

[MacDonald, Joanna]

Each district/school uses their own field trip permission slips. Some invitationals may have other release forms, but they will place those on the site where you signed up.  I think that answers your question?

Joanna MacDonald

Science Instructor

St. Francis Catholic High School

5900 Elvas Avenue, Sacramento, CA 95819

office +1 (916) 452-3621

jmacd...@stfrancishs.org | www.stfrancishs.org

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