Fourteen names on the math club sign-up sheet, and they don’t match. Three students already do contest math. Most of the rest signed up because they like puzzles, and two are there because a parent filled in the form. The first meeting is next Thursday. You have no budget, and the only ready-made material in the drawer is last year’s contest paper.
That paper is tempting because it’s done: printed, free and with the answer key stapled to the back. We’d keep it in the drawer until week six. The plan we’d run instead has one 45-minute meeting template, a theme for each of six weeks and six original anchor problems. Each problem has a version any student can start and an extension your fastest student can’t finish quickly.
Run your new math club’s first five meetings on one problem a week that everyone can start and nobody finishes quickly, and give your strongest students the hardest part of it to own. In week six the club runs its own team round, and then you pick a contest together.
Why Not Just Hand Out Last Year’s Contest Paper?
Past papers do work for a team that already has a contest date. The Washington Student Math Association’s math club starter pack calls practicing team problem sets from past competitions “the most direct way to prepare your club members for what they will see during the competition.” If that describes your club, start with the papers.
Your sign-up sheet describes a mixed room, though, and a contest paper tends to sort that group within minutes. The three who can score race ahead. The puzzle kids discover they can’t start question 1, and the club starts to feel like a second test after school.
Over the next few weeks the newcomers are the first to drift away, and they’re next year’s team. By November you’re coaching the same three students who would have done contest math anyway, while most of the other eleven names on the sign-up sheet have stopped coming.
How Do You Start a Math Club in Two Weeks?
To start a math club, find a sponsor and get your school’s approval. Then fix one weekly time and room, recruit wider than the students who already compete and plan the first meetings around problems everyone can start. After that, put your planning time into the meetings.
The setup comes down to five jobs.
| Job | What we’d do | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Sponsor and approval | Ask your principal for a room and a named adult before you put up a single flyer | Nobody can sign up for a club that has nowhere to meet |
| Weekly slot | One after-school hour, same day every week | A student-run association’s starter pack says most clubs meet after school, about an hour, once a week |
| Recruiting | Announcements, a flyer with one puzzle on it, and asking colleagues for the kid who loves puzzles but doesn’t top the class | Your future team is mostly not in the top group yet |
| First meeting | Start straight into Week 1 below, with a two-minute floor problem | A first success matters more than a rules talk |
| A free structure | U.S. grades 6–8: the MATHCOUNTS National Math Club (details below) | Free resources and recognition at no cost |
Don’t worry if the core group is small. The same starter pack puts the core of a successful club at around three to eight regulars.
If you teach grades 6–8 in the U.S., the MATHCOUNTS National Math Club gives you a free frame to hang this plan on. It’s a non-competitive program with free games, explorations, problem sets and monthly challenges. Registration is free for U.S. schools and U.S.-based groups with at least four students in grades 6–8 who meet regularly, in person or online, per the program rules and FAQ. Registration for 2026–27 is open.
Meet at least five times with at least four eligible students at each meeting and the club can apply for Silver Level status. Silver applications open November 2, and the prize deadline is April 15, 2027. Joining the club program doesn’t sign you up for the competition, which runs through each student’s school; here’s how the MATHCOUNTS Competition Series works if you want both.
Outside the U.S., or teaching younger students, you can run everything below without it. High school teachers have a different route too: our guide to starting a Mu Alpha Theta chapter at a high school covers that one.
What Happens in One 45-Minute Meeting?
Every meeting in our plan has the same four parts, so students know what’s coming and you only have to plan one problem a week.
- Starter, 5 minutes. One question anyone can answer while people arrive and find a seat.
- Anchor problem, 25 minutes. Students work in pairs. Everyone begins on the floor version.
- Share-out, 10 minutes. The student who found a first step presents, even if a faster pair already has the answer. You’re rewarding the start.
- Leftover question, 5 minutes. Someone writes the question the club didn’t finish on a sticky note and posts it on the unfinished board. Next week opens with it.
The anchor problems borrow an idea from NRICH, whose low threshold high ceiling article describes a low threshold high ceiling task as one where “everyone can get started, and everyone can get stuck.” In this plan we call the two ends the floor and the ceiling. The floor is a version a grade 4 student can do in about two minutes. The ceiling is an extension your fastest student can’t finish quickly, usually “find them all”, “does it always work” or “why”.
A student who leaves with a question on the board has a reason to come back.
The First Six Meetings, Week by Week
This table shows the whole season of math club activities at a glance. The grade labels are rough: floors sit around grade 4, ceilings around grades 7–8. We wrote all six problems for this page; none is taken from a contest.
| Week | Theme | Anchor problem | Floor | Ceiling | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Patterns you can act out | The Name Chain | Count it for 6 players | Any club size and why | Who lists every name and who spots the pattern |
| 2 | Counting paths | Routes to the Library | Draw every route on a small grid | A bigger grid with a closed corner | Students who start writing numbers on corners |
| 3 | A strategy game | Take One, Two or Four | Find the winning move from 5 | Who wins from 20 and how | Pairs who start playing backward from the end |
| 4 | Logic | Five Chairs | A three-person seating puzzle | Five people, then write your own | Clear reasons said out loud |
| 5 | Number puzzles | Four in a Row | Spot the remainder pattern | Prove it, then generalize | “It always works” claims with no reason yet |
| 6 | Team round | Your club’s own round | Mixed teams of 3–4 | The five ceilings plus a tie-breaker | Who explains for the team |
Week 1: Patterns You Can Act Out
Stand the club in a circle before anyone touches a pencil. The first student says their own name. The next says the first name and then their own, and so on around the circle. It’s an icebreaker that turns into a counting problem, and it means you learn the names too.
Anchor problem 1: The Name Chain
- Floor (grade 4): Six players do the name chain. How many names are said in total?
- Ceiling (grade 7): How many names for a club of 25? Another chain had 300 names said in total; how many players were there? Explain why your rule works for any size.
Show answers
Floor: 21 (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6).
Ceiling: 325 names; 24 players. Write the sum forward and backward: each pair adds to n + 1 and there are n pairs, so twice the total is n × (n + 1). The total is n × (n + 1) ÷ 2. For 25: 25 × 26 ÷ 2 = 325. For 300: 24 × 25 ÷ 2 = 300.
Week 2: Counting Paths
Draw a street grid on the board and put the school in the bottom left corner. Students may only walk east or north. Pairs who start writing a number on each corner are about to find the ceiling on their own.
Anchor problem 2: Routes to the Library
- Floor (grade 4): The library is 2 blocks east and 2 blocks north. Draw every shortest route. How many are there?
- Ceiling (grade 8): Now it’s 4 blocks east and 3 north. How many routes? The corner 2 blocks east and 1 north is closed for roadwork. How many routes avoid it? Why is each corner’s count the sum of the counts at the corners just west and just south of it?
Show answers
Floor: 6.
Ceiling: 35 routes, 17 that avoid the closed corner. You reach any corner from the corner to its west or the one to its south, so its count is the sum of those two (that’s Pascal’s triangle, tilted). Routes through the closed corner: 3 ways to reach it × 6 ways on from it = 18. So 35 − 18 = 17.
Week 3: A Two-Player Strategy Game
Hand each pair a pile of counters, beans or paper clips. Players take turns removing 1, 2 or 4 counters, and whoever takes the last counter wins. Let them play five or six games before you ask a single question.
Anchor problem 3: Take One, Two or Four
- Floor (grade 4): There are 5 counters left and it’s your turn. Which move wins?
- Ceiling (grade 8): The game starts with 20 counters. Do you want to go first or second, and what’s your strategy? Why doesn’t the “take 4” move change the pattern?
Show answers
Floor: take 2, leaving 3. Whatever your partner takes, you take the rest. Taking 1 or 4 hands your partner the win.
Ceiling: go first. The losing piles for the player about to move are 3, 6, 9 and so on. Take 2 to leave 18, then always bring the pile back to a multiple of 3. None of 1, 2 or 4 is a multiple of 3, so from a multiple of 3 no move reaches another one.
Week 4: Logic
This is the week your fast students start writing problems for everyone else (more on that below). The ceiling ends by asking them to do exactly that.
Anchor problem 4: Five Chairs
- Floor (grade 4): Ana, Ben and Cy sit in three chairs in a row. Ana isn’t on an end. Ben sits somewhere to the right of Cy. Who sits where, left to right?
- Ceiling (grade 7): Dev, Eli, Fay, Gus and Hana sit in five chairs in a row. Fay has the middle chair. Neither Hana nor Gus is on an end. Gus sits next to Eli, and Dev sits somewhere left of Hana. Find the order, then write your own three-person puzzle with exactly one answer.
Show answers
Floor: Cy, Ana, Ben.
Ceiling: Dev, Hana, Fay, Gus, Eli. Hana and Gus take chairs 2 and 4, so Eli (next to Gus) sits on an end. If Gus were in chair 2, Eli would be in chair 1, Hana in 4 and Dev in 5, to Hana’s right. That breaks the last clue, so Gus is in chair 4.
Week 5: Number Puzzles
Number puzzles reward the students who keep trying examples, so give the room plenty of scrap paper and let them collect evidence before anyone explains.
Anchor problem 5: Four in a Row
- Floor (grade 4): Add four whole numbers in a row (try 1 to 4, then 5 to 8, then your own) and divide each sum by 4. What do you notice?
- Ceiling (grade 8): Explain why. Then try five in a row, divided by 5. For which counts k does a sum of k numbers in a row always divide evenly by k?
Show answers
Floor: the remainder is always 2.
Ceiling: call the first number n. Four in a row add to 4n + 6 = 4 × (n + 1) + 2. Five in a row add to 5n + 10 = 5 × (n + 2), always a multiple of 5. In general the sum is kn + k × (k − 1) ÷ 2, which divides evenly by k exactly when k is odd. For even k the remainder is k ÷ 2.
Week 6: Your Club’s Own Team Round
No new problem this week. The team round is the five ceiling questions your club has already met, plus one fresh tie-breaker. Make teams of 3–4 and mix them on purpose, so every team has a regular and at least one newcomer. Give them 25 minutes. Then teams swap papers and the club scores the round itself, one point per ceiling question with a reason, using the answers above.
Tie-breaker: Digit Sum Five
- How many three-digit numbers have digits that add up to 5?
Show answers
15. Sort them by the hundreds digit. A 1 gives five numbers, from 104 up to 140. Then 2 gives four, 3 gives three, 4 gives two and 5 gives just 500.
Use the last ten minutes for the contest decision, and ask the students what they want next. If it’s a contest, our guide to which middle school contest your club could aim for compares the options, and this is the point where last year’s paper comes out of the drawer. For younger clubs, these weekly-style practice problems for grades 4–8 can keep the problem-of-the-week habit going.
What Do You Do With the Kids Who Finish First?
You don’t give them a separate group or a harder worksheet. Splitting the club in week two tells everyone who the “real” members are. In our plan they stay in the same room and take on the three jobs below.
- They own the ceiling. They still do the floor with their partner, then spend the rest of the 25 minutes on the ceiling question.
- They explain a second method. An answer they found one way isn’t done until they can show it another way, at the share-out, to students who are still on the floor.
- From week 4, they write floors. Writing a three-person puzzle with exactly one answer is harder than solving a five-person one, and the rest of the club gets new problems out of it.
If they want more, point them to a method for the harder problems your fast students want. Art of Problem Solving is another good place to send them: it has books, online classes and a big problem-solving community for students in grades 5–12.
How Will You Know It’s Working by Week Six?
You won’t get a score for this, and you don’t need one. Keep the week 1 sign-up sheet and look at three things yourself.
- Who came back. Tick the names that showed up in week 5 and week 6.
- Who presented a first step. If it’s only ever the same three students, move the share-out spotlight.
- How many leftover questions got picked up. A student who opens next week with a sticky note from the board is a student who thought about math club between meetings.
Picture the seventh Thursday. You’ve run six meetings for a room that started mixed. The students who kept coming know how a meeting goes, and the strongest ones have work that stretches them without a separate table. The club has run its own team round, and the students had a say in what comes next. For a U.S. grades 6–8 club with at least four eligible students at five of those meetings, the Silver Level requirement is met too.
One thing Gonit won’t do is run your meeting or build your team round. It gives students somewhere to keep practicing between meetings, at their own grade. Gonit has 10,000+ original questions for grades 1–12. They’re sorted grade-wise and topic-wise, from arithmetic and number sense to combinatorics and logical reasoning. Students and parents each get their own access.
Make Preparing for Math Olympiad Simple!
FAQ
What do you do in math club?
It depends on the club. The MATHCOUNTS National Math Club uses games, explorations, problem sets and monthly challenges. In our plan, each meeting has a 5-minute starter, 25 minutes on one problem in pairs, a 10-minute share-out and a question left for next week.
How many students do you need for a math club?
There’s no universal minimum. The MATHCOUNTS National Math Club asks for at least four students in grades 6–8 that meet regularly. One student-run association’s starter pack puts the core of a successful club at around three to eight regulars.
What is the difference between a math club and a math circle?
The names overlap. A math circle is an extracurricular activity meant to enrich students’ understanding of math, and the idea came from the USSR and Bulgaria. Circles usually lean toward long problem discussions. Clubs vary more, and some circles prepare for competitions too.
Related guides
- A Mu Alpha Theta practice test you can run in one club meeting
- Continental Math League: which division, which dates, what it costs
- MATHCOUNTS practice problems for every round
Louise R. Fox holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics and brings a researcher's perspective to how students actually learn the subject. Based in the United States, she writes about olympiad-level problem solving and the deeper thinking skills that carry students well beyond the classroom.
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