Scioly.org

Hello everyone, I'm currently in the process of starting a Science Olympiad team at my school next year. Although I'll be a senior next year, I'm really excited to bring this opportunity to my school. My friends are really passionate about it and so am I and I hope to be able to compete and learn more about science.

If I have to be honest, I'm a bit unsure on where to start with the team and what I should do in regards to help lead them as a captain effectively and how to study for events since I haven't done it since middle school. If anyone could give me advice on where to go with a new team, that would be great!

I'd recommend downloading some of the MySO materials if you can still get a hold of them. It has seemed to me that the free MySO materials are better organized an more useful than the "starter packs" that they charge for on the main SciO website. That, in combination, with the tests on the test exchange would provide a good starting point. (My school purchased some of the starter packs this year and they were essentially unusable - there were delays getting access because the email associated with the purchase differed from the email of the coaches, only one person could access each subject, the thing you could access was a giant pdf of poorly formatted material that was in some online reader that was very clunky and would not permit downloads only printing and would not permit edits.)

Dana, where do we find the "free MySO materials" you mentioned?

We're thinking to start organizing a homeschool team next month, for the 2023-24 season. We wanted to gradually start studying the events, etc. Any advice on how to start, maybe what games to play, etc would be greatly appreciated. We do understand that some events repeat, but the topics within them change. But maybe there are some universal things that we could already start covering, before the Sept 2023 rules roll out?

Anykey wrote: ↑December 22nd, 2022, 7:09 pm Dana, where do we find the "free MySO materials" you mentioned?

We're thinking to start organizing a homeschool team next month, for the 2023-24 season. We wanted to gradually start studying the events, etc. Any advice on how to start, maybe what games to play, etc would be greatly appreciated. We do understand that some events repeat, but the topics within them change. But maybe there are some universal things that we could already start covering, before the Sept 2023 rules roll out?

At what level? Middle school? (Division B)

There's a set of events that show up every year: Anatomy & Physiology (although the systems change), Crimebusters, Disease Detectives, Dynamic Planet (again, focus changes each year), Experimental Design, Meteorology, Road Scholar, Write It Do It.

The rest of the events generally play for two years then rotate off.

There's always a balsa building event (build a structure with the best strength/weight ratio). This year is the second year of Bridge, so we'd expect Towers to be the event next year.
Flight will probably be an event next year.
Reach for the Stars will probably be the astronomy event next year
Forestry will probably repeat next year
Microbe Mission is probably an event next year
Can't judge a powder will probably repeat next year
Ecology and Fossils are probably both events next year
Fast Facts probably repeats next year
Roller Coaster probably repeats
Optics probably comes back.
Wheeled Vehicle will be the car event again next year
And there will be three (if I counted right) I'm less certain of. Density Lab, probably, is one.

Talk to your state organization - perhaps you could volunteer at a regional or state tournament, or at an invitational, and then you'd get a bit of an idea of how this craziness actually works.

If you have kids who want to start building things, you could order one of the plane kits from one of the kitmakers (look in the flight forum), and have the kids build one and start trying to trim it and get it to fly for a minute or two. Teach them to log everything.

Have them build a balsa tower. The standard test apparatus is a 5cm square block with an eyebolt in the middle, from which hangs a chain and a bucket, and it gets loaded up to 15kg. Have the kids build a tower which is 50cm high and whose legs fall outside a 20cm diameter circle at the base. A really competitive device for those specs would probably hold the full 15kg and weigh less than 4g. Get under 10g and you're heading in the right direction. Again, get in the habit of measuring and logging everything. The kids should understand how a particular build failed under load, and so what to do to improve the next design.

Write it Do it is a fun place to start for middle school kids - you build some model out of "stuff", and have enough identical parts for kits for half the kids to build it. Put the kids in pairs. One kid from each pair is the "writer" who gets to look at the model for 25 minutes and write instructions (in english, no diagrams) for how to build it. Then, in another room, hand the other kids their partner's instructions and a kit. It's a nice exercise to get the kids thinking about the importance of clear instructions. There are plenty of other games you can play where the kids give you instructions and you follow them literally...

I actually just did something like this last month. A friend from another school had told me about SciOly, so I decided to create one at my school. We have a small team but have competed at one tournament so far, and it seems to be going well considering it is our first year. If you want to do it, do it, but it might be a little overwhelming and a lot of work your first season.

Some tips/suggestions:
- Find an advisor who you think will be helpful in terms of organizing logistics, showing up to tournaments/practices, etc. Although most schools do it with science teachers, and that is what I did as well, in hindsight, it may be better to have a more organized and helpful teacher with little knowledge of the topic than one who has knowledge but may not be as prepared to advise. Also, pick someone you get along with well. Your advisor doesn't always have to be a teacher, it could be a parent of someone on the team.

- Your team can be small, although I would recommend having at least 7 people. We have 8 or 9, depending on the day, and it is very hard to schedule events and make groupings. When you put people together as partners try to put together people who you think will work well together.

- To collect and determine what events people want to be in, put all events into a google form divided by national tournament event block (so there are no conflicts). Then put all events into a spreadsheet and assign each person at least 3 events (depending on team size, I guess if you have a big team it could be less). It sounds and seems more complicated than it is, and it may take you a moment to figure out what you're doing, but once you get it it will be a lot easier.

- Start early. I think my school could have a much larger team, but the info meeting for it was a week before the registration to our state chapter was due, so we had to be super fast about it. Also, schools may be willing to pay the registration fee for your first year - we got the school principal to pay the $90 fee due to the state SO board.

- Finding tournaments - email the person in charge of invitationals and ask if you can register or attend. Since it is an invitational they may not be expecting you, and some will let you register late or waive the registration fee for your first season. The SO community is really a great one and even if teams are competitive, everyone just wants other teams to succeed!

- Resources - begin putting binders and info sheets together several weeks before the tournament. This will help you be best prepared. Also, go to your local thrift store or dollar store and buy some cheap calculators. The SO rule book has more specifics about what kind of calculators are allowed, and you need to adhere to these at tournaments otherwise your calculator will be taken.

- Practice tests - do a practice run-through of all events before the first tournament. We didn't do that and it would have really helped if we did.

- Finally, even when it's hard, even when you want to give up, don't. Although we have an advisor, I do all of the logistics, tournament scheduling, and administrative stuff, in addition to competing on the team and going to school/sports. My advisor is very helpful in requesting school buses and getting registered for tournaments since I can't do any of that. It can be really overwhelming, and during the week leading up to our first tournament, I wanted to quit and give up because there was so much work involved. But once the tournament was over I was really happy I had done it, because it was such a fun competition!

sonoob wrote: ↑January 12th, 2023, 6:51 am - Find an advisor who you think will be helpful in terms of organizing logistics, showing up to tournaments/practices, etc. Although most schools do it with science teachers, and that is what I did as well, in hindsight, it may be better to have a more organized and helpful teacher with little knowledge of the topic than one who has knowledge but may not be as prepared to advise. Also, pick someone you get along with well. Your advisor doesn't always have to be a teacher, it could be a parent of someone on the team.

Your school will probably require a teacher to be present and in charge of the team on competition days for liability - they are unlikely to authorize a school activity where a random parent is the responsible adult. That doesn't mean that the parent can't be your lead coach and do most of the work, but you almost certainly need a commitment to show up from an actual teacher.

sonoob wrote: ↑January 12th, 2023, 6:51 am - Your team can be small, although I would recommend having at least 7 people. We have 8 or 9, depending on the day, and it is very hard to schedule events and make groupings. When you put people together as partners try to put together people who you think will work well together.

Work with what you have. Most events can be done with a single person with only a modest cost in score. WIDI has to have two people, and Codebusters & Experimental Design are very challenging to do well with a single person, but in most other events a single person can compete reasonably. If you only have a few people, you might not be able to compete in all 23 events. That's bad for your overall team performance, but you can still do well in individual events, and if you only have a handful of people, it's reasonable to concentrate on that.

sonoob wrote: ↑January 12th, 2023, 6:51 am - To collect and determine what events people want to be in, put all events into a google form divided by national tournament event block (so there are no conflicts). Then put all events into a spreadsheet and assign each person at least 3 events (depending on team size, I guess if you have a big team it could be less).

A full team has 15 students. There are currently 48 open slots at C level, in the national event slate (23 events, 21 with two competitors, and two with 3). This means that on a full team, most people take three events, and three people take four events.

sonoob wrote: ↑January 12th, 2023, 6:51 am- Start early. I think my school could have a much larger team, but the info meeting for it was a week before the registration to our state chapter was due, so we had to be super fast about it. Also, schools may be willing to pay the registration fee for your first year - we got the school principal to pay the $90 fee due to the state SO board.

You can add team members throughout the year - you don't have to have them all signed up on day 1.

I'm glad you're having fun with SO. And that's really the point - learn some science and have a good time. Winning medals and trophies is a nice bonus, of course.