STEM School in Arizona - Team Structure

In a series of posts, I am going to highlight different team structures for Science Olympiad teams.

This middle school team is from a STEM school in Arizona.  This new coach describes her team structure:

We are a STEM school and have added Science Olympiad as one of our I Choose programs.  We meet almost daily to research and/or build for the upcoming events.  This year, we made Science Olympiad a club class, where students need to apply to become a part of the class.  This way, they seem much more motivated and excited to be a part of our program.  It also qualifies them for some California trips at the end of the school-year.

The principal of the school had children (who are now grown) participate in Science Olympiad years ago.  She started the program three years ago, and I joined the team two years ago.    The school is located in a rural part of northern Arizona in the Prescott Valley.  The school has about 460 students. There are 22 students in the Science Olympiad club class, and about 15% of those students are in honors classes.  Another science teacher helps with some events and travels with us to competitions. This year parents volunteered to help with concessions.  The team plans to attend 2 invitationals, regionals, and states.  Most competitions are 2-3 hours away, and the state competition is 4 hours away.

My goal for this year is to have a more involved group of students that are well exposed to the information they will need for the competitions.  Since I teach science technology programs that are module based, we have access to many computers and materials.  Even though we have a class, the students will still need to put in time after school for the building events.  So far my students have risen to the challenge and I will do my best to keep them on track!

Science Olympiad Team Structures

In a series of posts, I am going to highlight different team structures for Science Olympiad teams.

My team is a middle school team at a small Catholic elementary school which is located in a affluent suburban city in Northeast Ohio.  This team is managed and coached by parents.  When the team started, we would meet on Saturday mornings at the school.  We would try to rotate through all 23 events over a two week period.  Most of the building events would meet in someone's basement or workshop at a different time.  I coached about 7 events and a few other parents would coach 2 or 3 events.  The rest of the events were covered by other parents that each coached 1 event.

This year, our whole team will meet on Fridays after school once a month for team bonding and cover general competition strategies.  The individual events will meet at different times based on the coach's availability and student extra-curricular schedules.  We do not have any restrictions on student participation in additional extracurriculars and we try to work around the winter basketball season.  Every student that wants to be on the team is welcome.  We usually have between 15-20 students on the team and the younger students take turns as alternates.  Some years we have 8th graders that graduated come back to the team as a 9th grader, but not always.

In Northeast Ohio, we are fortunate to have many invitational competitions within a one hour drive.  This year, we plan to attend 5 invitational competitions before heading to our regional competition.  The invitational competitions are a great way for our students to test their building event devices and get constructive advice from event judges.  It is also a great way for new students to learn about the structure of the competition. 

We also try to periodically have family potluck dinners to provide students and parents a chance to get to know one another.  A highlight of the year is when(if) we go to the State Competition.  The students are dismissed from school mid-day on Friday so we can travel to the State Competition at The Ohio State University.  Each family makes their own travel arrangements and hotel reservations, and we usually all stay at the same hotel. The night before the competition, most of the families go to a video game / bar and grill type of place.  We all have dinner, play video games and win tickets for silly prizes.  Then we head back to the hotel and try to get to sleep at a reasonable hour.  The next morning, we are full of excitement as we head to campus for the beginning of the competition.  After a long day of walking across The Ohio State campus multiple times, we usually have dinner together while we wait for the award ceremony.  We all have many fond memories of our trips to the State Competition.  I hope we are able to go again this year.

Science Olympiad First Parent Meeting

We recently met with parents (new and old) to recruit coaches for our middle school Science Olympiad team.  Our team is coached by parents with support from the school.  At the middle school level, the students still need to learn skills like organization, time management, research skills (thank you Google), and how to use power tools!  The students need an adult to help them learn these skills, as well as the science content, and so each event needs a dedicated coach.  I wanted to share with you some of the things I said to the parents as we talked about being a coach for a Science Olympiad event.

1.  For our team structure, Science Olympiad is not an activity where you can drop off your child, go run errands, and come back to pick them up in a few hours.  This is like a travel baseball team where at various times you may be needed to be the base running coach, batting coach, driver, team manager, or snack provider.  There is a job for everyone, and we need every parent to help in some way.

2.  You don't need to be "good" at science, just good at managing the kids.  Your primary job is to keep the kids on task, help them organize the information they are learning, and help them read and understand the rules and event parameters.  We need you to schedule a time for your event to meet and practice, and help the kids set goals for the next practice or next competition.  The kids are pretty good at learning the science when provided with a structure.

3.  Our team will become an extended family.  Like many travel sports teams, we will spend a lot of time together at practices and competitions.  During this time, we will get to know one another and offer support when needed.  We will try to organize social activities for the families to foster this friendly and supportive atmosphere among the kids and families.

4.  No one is judging you on your coaching ability based on how your event performs.  The event performance is really up to the kids, and the effort they exert to improve between competitions.  Some events will do well, some will fail completely.  It is all part of the experience, and we often learn more from our failures than from our successes.  We will appreciate your efforts, no matter the end result.  Because without your help, we would not be able to offer this experience to our kids.

5.  As parents, we are asked to do many things for our children.  Most parents that get involved with Science Olympiad love the experience, not only for their children, but for themselves as well.  Parents love learning new things too, and science is a fascinating subject.  And it makes for great dinner conversations!

Log Books for Building Events

The 2014-2015 Science Olympiad Season have begun, and it is time to share some more experiences with you. 

I recently received a question about log books and what the format should be.  Here was my response:

I think the information needed in a log book will be specific to the event.
Usually there is some indication of what to include in the event rules. I
do not know of any specific format that must be used, so long as it includes
the relevant information.

I looked through past event coaching guidelines for Wright Stuff, and below
are the items to include in a flight log. I imagine you could create a
table with column headings for each parameter, and for each launch, the
students would record this information. Then this table would be submitted
to the judges during impound.

* 6 parameters for 10 previous flights prior to competition

* 3 required parameters

* Motor size before windup

* Winds on the motor at launch

* Flight time

* 3 Additional parameter examples

* Turns remaining at landing

* Estimated peak flight height

* Estimated flight path diameter

* Torque at launch


One side note regarding any log books or graphs that are turned in during
impound: Always make several copies. One copy can be turned in to the
judges, one copy can stay in their binder (if allowed during competition)
and one can be used for the next competition. Judges do not always give
back the log book or graphs, or they are misplaced.


I hope this helps. Good luck.



Lucy