"Solving problems is a practical art, like swimming, or skiing, or playing the piano: you can learn it only by imitation and practice. . . . if you wish to learn swimming you have to go in the water, and if you wish to become a problem solver you have to solve problems."
-"Mathematical Discovery" (George Polya)

Have you been looking for quality tuition to develop a talent with Mathematics?
Having difficulties getting your talented friend along to Mathematical enrichment programmes?
Take a few minutes now to have a look at how MATHGYM can help.
Before we look at how the tutorial can help, I thought you might like to know something about me. I am a Mathematics teacher of close to thirty years experience in secondary schools in Queensland Australia. I have worked with Mathematically interested and able students for all my teaching career and have successfully prepared students for local, national and international Mathematics competitions. I have also conducted weekly sessions for the Mathematically interested and able in my town. This training programme is the result of these experiences.

You will have noticed that I don't use the terms Gifted and Talented. My experience has been that these terms mean many different things to many different people. I prefer to talk about programmes for the Mathematically Interested and/or Able, where the word "Able" is used to describe "demonstrated past success". I included the "or Able" - because I never exclude or discourage students in my classes if they are interested in Problem solving. If a student doesn't display a lot of "ability" in the classroom, she/he is still welcome to try the problem solving enrichment program I run. Often this type of student displays a degree of lateral thinking and initiative which allows him/her to be quite a successful problem solver. Also, a well designed program (dare I say - like MATHGYM) focuses on the strategies and heuristic of problem solving as much as the knowledge of Mathematics.

This interactive tutorial has grown out of my desire to share what I have learnt about Mathematical problem solving over the 25 years of my teaching career, and to make problem solving interesting and accessible to the Mathematically interested and able. I mean "accessible" in several respects:

• Financially - the cost of the tutorial is small compared to the cost of a personal Mathematics tutor over the hours of Mathematics enrichment involved in each SET of problems.
• Availability - the tutorial is available to anyone at any time and anywhere in the world, so long as Internet access is available. The participant doesn't have to make a commitment to a regular time or be in a particular place to access the tutorial.
• Equity - anyone can use the tutorial (provided they have internet access), not just those children who have been identified by some grading system.

The Tutorial is based on the belief that effective Mathematical problem solving is largely to do with confidence (given some ability) and that confidence can be developed by providing:

• appropriate challenges,
• graded support based on identification of effective strategies,
• clear, logical modelling of the solutions using an effective strategy,
• and follow-up practice.

In the classroom I have found that a successful way that the tutorial can be used is to:

• determine those students who are ready for a mathematical challenge,
• provide a differentiated contract that minimises repetition in the consolidation, and that uses a printout of the appropriate SET (available here in printable PDF format).
• when the student has shown you that the set work is completed - he/she works quietly on the problems in the handout,
• all support (hints, solutions) is available online.

MATHGYM is designed so that children can gain this confidence anywhere in the world at any time - they don't have to be in a classroom, or even at school, they just need access to the internet. If you want to know a bit more detail about how MATHGYM is organised - click on "MATHGYM" at left of screen.