Olympiads are the best thing that has happened to the Indian education system, ever since the education system decided to distribute itself into different boards of education, Olympiads work to bring students of all boards together and test whether or not their pace of knowledge is keeping up with others in this race towards a bright future, It is like an encounter to the real competition that they might face later in the future for their careers knocking before it really happens. It is very important for every student to know where they stand in this crowd and for this the Olympiads play a vital role.
Class 7 to be specific plays an indispensable role in a student’s life, the lessons and chapters learnt at this phase act as a building block for the higher studies, the base concepts in the chapters can be seen as the most simple and the most crucial things there can be if we see it like that. The students who dream to get into fields of sciences need to pay keen attention towards important chapters like mathematics, science etc.
If we start talking about how to prepare yourself for the mathematics Olympiad for class 7 we definitely observe that you need to solve more and more questions since the level of the subject has also risen prominently when compared to previous classes.
In order to make yourself fully prepared you first need to pay attention to the details such as the time limit, the no. of questions asked, the area covered and see if there is a change in the syllabus from last year.
After you are done with gathering all this information you need to get started on with the real work, that is solving questions, trust me on this you cannot get away with that you need to work really hard and there is no such shortcut for this.
Now coming to some stats from previous year’s Olympiads the time given for solving 50 questions was 60 minutes, So if you calculate in an average you have around 1 and half minutes to solve a given question, which is a decent amount of time and not to mention only if you are prepared well. Now coming to the type of question that has been asked, there were four sections in the paper that will more or less be the same.
The first section is the logical reasoning section consisting of 15 questions and contributing 15 marks to the total which means one mark per question. This section consists of Verbal and non-verbal. For better practice, you can go through previous years papers, like IMO Class 7 2013 Question Paper.
Coming to the second section, the Mathematical Reasoning which contributes to the maximum no. of questions which is 20 and also provides you with one mark each for every correct answer given, Now this section is all about the chapters in your maths textbook, you are surely getting all of those marks if you are good with Whole Numbers, Playing with Numbers, Knowing your Numbers, Geometric Concepts, Understanding Elementary Shapes, Integers, Fractions, Decimals, Data Handling, Mensuration, Algebra, Ratio and Proportion, Symmetry, Practical Geometry. This list of chapters has been decided given the education system in all the boards. You need to solve more and more questions to score well in this question only hard work can sail you through this section, you have to be confident about the questions in your maths practice book. In order to score well in this section needs to solve the practice once twice before the actual exam, this will make sure that you can solve any question given directly from the textbook without any second thought and that would give you an up[per hand in this competition, which I bet you want.
On the other hand section three of this assessment tests you for the value-added part, the syllabus will be pretty much similar to that of Mathematical Reasoning but this section will be based on your day to day life. So mow you figure out that your textbook solving will provide you with an extra 10 marks too because this section comprises of total 10 questions and has one mark each for every correct answer you give.
Section 4 and the last section of the assessment is the achiever’s section, which tests whether or not you are amongst those top scorers, and a student with some high order thinking skills, which is why they name the questions HOTS question that is “ High order thinking skills questions”, these question unlike others consists of 3 marks each and the section only has 5 questions, which makes it extra special and these question are from the syllabus for section 2 as well. So remember when I mentioned solving your practice book as many times as possible and you are good to go.
Now coming to how to score well in the assessment, and call yourself well-prepared as I have mentioned more than enough times now, solving your practice book is the key. Mathematics as a subject demands practice, you need to make sure you have solved enough questions before you sit for the real exam, you need to make your own notes no one else can teach you better than you yourself can so gear up and solve 20-30 questions daily this will surely give you an edge over your fellow classmates.
Next in the line when you are sure that you now know all the concepts and have solved enough questions you are ready to take mock tests. We now in the 20th century are fortunate enough to have a huge amount of data on the net so go ahead and put your head in solving some mocks and the previous year’s questions, this would boost the confidence in you and you will be having an idea on how many questions can you solve in the real test.
Keep solving!!! All the best!!!!