American Math Competition 10 (2008-2009)
This two hours course, “American Math Competition”, is designed for challenging students strongly interested in math competitions, mainly for AMC (American Math Competitions) series. AMC has three levels: the AMC8 is for students in grades 8 and below; the AMC10 is for students in grades 10 and below; and the AMC12 is for students in grades 12 and below. The course starts with AMC8 but will quickly lead to AMC10 and AMC12. AMC8 is equivalent to or higher than popular MathCounts which is designed for middle school students in grades 6-8. The course will teach various math techniques to solve broad range of math puzzles. At the same time, students will have a lot of hand-on experience by exploring series of AMC activities. The motto of National Council of Teachers of Mathematics proclaims: "Do math and you can do anything". The school can’t promise but only wish that the students in my class can do anything after finishing this challenging course. Bon Voyage!
Course requirement:
Due to the contents of this course, it requires 9th grade or above.
Course outline (fall session):
Lesson 1: Introduction to Math: stories about Guass and Euler
Lesson 2-4: AMC8 exercises
Lesson 5: All about circles: cord, arc, secant, power of point, Ptolemy equality and inequality, homothetic center
Lesson 6-8: AMC10 exercises
Lesson 9: All about triangles: centroid, inscribed circle and incenter, circumcircle and circumcenter, altitudes and orthocenter, Euler line and Heron theorem
Lesson 10-12: AMC10 exercises
Lesson 13: Let's count
Lesson 14-15: AMC10 exercises
Lesson 16: course project Rubik's cube 
Course outline (spring session):
Lesson 1-4: AMC10 exercises
Lesson 5: All about numbers: # of factors, sum of all factors, Euler theorem, phi function
Lesson 6: continuous fractions, Diophantine equation, Pell’s equation
Lesson 7-16: AMC10 exercises
Lesson 17: Let's celebrate

Chess I

The course will cover a variety of important chess topics including but not limited to: chess principles, Queen’s Gambit Declined and Colle System for white openings, Sicilian Defense for black openings, endgames, tactics (more than 1000 chess puzzles which I have compiled), annotated games form Kasparov, Tarrasch, Capablanca and Alekhine (every move will be explained), checkmate patterns and analyzing student games. Chess playing will be very limited during the classes due to the valuable lecture time. There will be a lot of activities in the class as well as in tournaments for the students. They will have excitements and despair, ups and downs, wins and losses. But the most important things about chess, as my son puts it, are “beat other kids, win trophies, make friends and have a lot of fun”. With professional chess teacher charging $30-40 an hour, you can’t beat this $68 a semester chess course. This course requires students to have basic chess knowledge such as basic chess principles, checkmate and stalemate, pawn vs. king ending, knowing how to checkmate with a single rook or two bishops, solve one or two move puzzles.

Chess II

The course will continue the main themes as Advanced Chess I. Moreover and unique for this course, during the first half of the semester, I will cover and explain 50 basic fascinating and beautiful checkmate patterns contained in How to Beat Your Dad at Chess such as back rank mate, Arabian mate, smothered mate, and Fisher Trap etc. During the second half of the semester, I will cover and explain 50 basic famous and wonderful chess tactics contained in Chess Tactics for Kidssuch as Greek sacrifice, stalemates, zwischenzug etc. Every week's exercises are based on the lessons. This course requires students to have basic chess knowledge such as basic chess principles, checkmate and stalemate, pawn vs. king ending, knowing how to checkmate with a single rook or two bishops, solve one or two move puzzles. These two books are available at Amazon: How to Beat Your Dad at Chess and Chess Tactics for Kids.