We want to provide you with an update on the Canadian innovation STEM⁺ Contests and talk about leaders for this week. Thanks again for being a fantastic teacher and helping kids continue to learn. Please let us know if you need help getting your students started in the contest course. We will be happy to help.

• We have opened Work Submissions for Debate, Visual Art, Creative Writing and Photography contests. Students can start submitting their work in the relevant contests on our contest/learning portal. We are looking forward to seeing the creativity of the students. Please pass on the message to them. Good Luck!
• Many teachers are now recommending our contests. Hence, we are getting many more inquiries. Thanks for your support. We appreciate it. You can indirectly help many more students by spreading awareness.
• Many students continue to take advantage of the CMSC training course. Several students have already spent over 50 hours solving the problems in the contest training course. This is what we call true enrichment. As you know, this is free for everyone. Teachers may also find out how their students are doing in CMSC by logging into the portal. Thank you, Lord Roberts, Junior Public School teachers, for motivating students to practice. This school has the highest average among all public schools.

We have posted many practice sets this week focused on timed tests and mental math tricks. You can just let your students know to try those.

We also encourage you to facilitate a healthy discussion in your classrooms for this week's theme, “What is the greatest version of yourself?” The following picture shows what CK ROBO thinks about his greatest version. This picture can stimulate good thoughts and ideas in your students. Let us know your experience if you try it.

Competitions promote healthy habits. Our ultimate goal is to help students understand that contests are not about winning and losing. Contests teach us to become the best version of ourselves. With your support, we can help students understand this philosophy so that they are not scared of competition anymore. As long as they learn something and get better at becoming the best version of themselves, our job is well done. For more ideas, you may also visit other motivational tips here. 

We also want to address a few questions that teachers are asking:

• When can we schedule Math and Computing contests?
• You can schedule these contests any day and time between May 15th to June 3rd. We will share the contest keys when you plan to do the contest. We will explain the steps closer to the contest dates.
• How long does it take to run the Math and Computing contests?
• Both contests are online. The computing contest is 45 minutes long. The Math contest has two parts. The problem-Solving part is 60 minutes long, and the Mental Math segment is 10 minutes long. You can do these sections in any order.
• Mental math practice sets take several seconds to load.
• Mental math quizzes are randomized. Questions and solutions for these questions are generated after students start the quiz. Depending on the load on the system, it could take a few seconds. We will give 1 minute extra time in the final contest to manage this. We will also add an extra minute to all mental math practice quizzes.
• We understand that sometimes students may not like to wait. Our goal is to give them different questions in each attempt. This process does take a few seconds. We will look into optimizing our system as well. Recently, our load has significantly increased. Thanks for being patient.

Thanks once again for your dedication and support. Thanks once again for believing in Competitive Kids STEM. Together, we can make a difference. Feel free to let us know if you have any questions for us.