From August 12, 2020, to November 7, 2020, members of the AYLUS Puget Sound branch held the 2020 AMC 8 Prep Course. Spanning over the course of approximately three months, this was the first long term class our branch held.
This contest preparation class was taught and prepared collaboratively by Cecilia Sun, Sophie Xuan, and Sarah Xuan. In each class, we reviewed select problems from one year of the AMC 8 exam, explaining step by step the solutions and the concepts involved in the problems. In total we covered from the exams from 2005 to 2019. In the majority of the classes, we also included extensions, written by the instructors, on concepts or techniques we believed were important for our students to learn or to brush up on. Through student feedback, we found that these extensions were extremely effective and taught new information purely completing the exams could not. Some of the extensions we covered included Pigeonhole, Area Ratios, Counting Techniques, Modular Arithmetic, etc. Our last class on November 7, 2020, was a summary class where we organized and reviewed all concepts we identified to be in the testing pool for the AMC 8 exams. We also went over some example problems written by the instructors that targeted specific concepts.
In the summer, classes met on Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2:30-3:30 PM PDT. We transitioned to a weekly schedule with the start of school, as we knew students (and instructors) would be much busier than they did in summer. From September to our last class, we held classes on Saturdays at the same time. We had around 20 students who attended steadily even after the start of school. Our students were not limited to the local Washington area our branch members primarily reside: we had students come from a wide range of places, including Oklahoma, Massachusetts, and even Canada.
We had a lot of fun teaching the classes and talking to the students! From the completion of our first long term class, we gained more experience that we will incorporate into the planning of our future events. Thanks to all our students and the community for sticking with us through our 2020 AMC 8 Prep Course! Good luck on the AMC 🙂 !.
We are also currently in the planning of some future activities. Be sure to keep an eye out for those when we send out notices!
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