If you love math and enjoy persevering with challenging problems, you have found your people! Sawnee 4th and 5th graders are invited to tryout for Math Team.

The fee for this academic team covers the contest fees, team t-shirt, practice book, and weekly meetings. The fee for the 24-25  school year is $130.

Try out sign ups for the 4th and 5th grade teams is now closed. Look for tryout information in August 2025!

Back for the 24-25 school year: Junior Math Team just for 3rd graders! Click HERE for Junior Math Team Information.

Check out our recognitions and awards for the 24-25 season at the bottom of this page!

Team Contact Information: 

Shawna Lyons, Gifted Teacher, Sawnee Elementary slyons@forsyth.k12.ga.us

Due to the limited number of spots on the 4th and 5th grade teams, students participate in a tryout process. Tryouts are held after school in late August. Students have one hour to answer a 20 question test that is comprised of Math Olympiad style questions. The 25 top scorers for each grade level are offered a spot on the team. This is a yearlong commitment with our last meeting being the end of year celebration in early May. 

Before accepting the spot on the team, students are asked to consider availability through the season and transportation home after team meetings. A calendar of meetings and contest dates for the year is provided at the start of the season. It should be noted that there are no make-ups allowed for any contests during the year.

We meet weekly afterschool from 3:15-4:30pm beginning after Labor Day in September through early May. 

Students who are successful on Math Team are highly proficient with the four operations of math and familiar with the properties of math (commutative, associative, distributive, identity.) They also have the ability to persevere and solve non-routine problems.

During our team meetings, students review the main problem solving strategies: Draw a picture or diagram Make an organized list, Solve a simpler problem, Work backward, Find a pattern Make a table, Guess, check and revise, Use reasoning (logic). Students will practice identifying which strategy is efficient for any given problem. 

We also review several skills and computation strategies to help apply the problem solving strategies.