Math Camp 6: Prealgebra Exploration

Summer Mathematics

This summer program is designed for students who will be in a 6th-grade math class or Prealgebra class in the fall. Students who have just completed our Math Level 5 Academic Year course are ready for Math Camp 6. If students have been assessed as not yet ready for AoPS Prealgebra, they should sign up for our Prealgebra Bootcamp course instead.

Each day of Math Camp 6 consists of a Problem Solving component and a Mathematical Exploration component. Problem Solving keeps students sharp on important topics while preparing them for the upcoming school year. We start each class with a quick review of a key topic that students should have encountered in the previous school year. This review is followed by a series of intriguing problems that push student understanding of the topic well beyond the standard fifth-grade level. We finish each Problem Solving discussion with a challenging activity in which students collaborate in teams.

Our Mathematical Explorations are designed to introduce topics that most students don't encounter until much later in their schooling, and to equip students with general mathematical strategies that will be useful throughout their education. The Math Camp 6 Mathematical Exploration starts with an introduction to several real-world problems that have the same underlying structure. These problems serve as an entry point into the rich field of graph theory. Students learn the basics of graph theory through mathematical games that can be solved with graph-theoretic concepts, laying the groundwork for applying graph theory to novel problems they'll encounter later in the course.

SYLLABUS

This two-week course meets Monday through Friday for three hours each day.

Space is very limited for our summer programs. Please do not wait until the last minute to enroll. If there are more than two weeks before the course starts, a $200 deposit will be due when enrolling, with the balance due two weeks before the course begins.