New Foundation Project

by rrusczyk, Oct 19, 2006, 2:51 AM

Can't remember if I mentioned our new Math Teams: San Diego project earlier. We are investing in a half-dozen middle schools in San Diego County, paying teachers at the schools to coach math teams. We're providing some books and some guidance, in the hopes that most (or all!) of them will build outstanding math teams. My first meeting with the teachers is next week - we're going out to dinner to talk about how to generate interest in math team and how to keep the kids coming. All of the teachers are at middle schools. Please share any ideas you might have for these teachers. They'll all be involved in the SDML, MOEMS, and MATHCOUNTS, but what should they do in their actual math team meetings?

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Depending on how much time they have available at each meeting, I think an optimal layout for a math team meeting is:
1) Have the students work problems individually (a timed MathCounts warmup, for example?)
2) Have a lecture on one of the topics that came up in the problems or simply a discussion of the problems. Every student will definitely pay attention to the lectures this way, since they will want to know how to do the problems they were stuck on and will be fascinated by the clever ways of doing the ones they got.
3) If time remains, then teamwork activities are also good - relays, team rounds, etc.
x) (where x is a real number between 1 and 3) If it is a long session then there should be a snack break in the middle. My mathcounts coach always had snack time!

Coming from my experience as a math club president, 4-year ARML team member, and Mathlete, I found this organization to be optimal. I'm sure there are many other good layouts for practices.

by hmmm, Oct 19, 2006, 11:10 AM

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Wow, what you've done for your area is amazing. I wish someone could have created such an extensive program where I live (Boston), I bet it would do me very good.

I hear that SDMO is very rewarding for Middle Schoolers especially.

by 13375P34K43V312, Oct 20, 2006, 11:08 PM

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Oh yeah, I go to Jonas Clarke Middle School (Josh Frost's school), and I'm looking forward to seeing you next Sunday!

by 13375P34K43V312, Oct 20, 2006, 11:09 PM

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13375P34K43V312 wrote:

Oh yeah, I go to Jonas Clarke Middle School (Josh Frost's school), and I'm looking forward to seeing you next Sunday!

You're in Josh's school - you're way ahead of nearly everyone in San Diego just because of that. We have very few teachers like that in San Diego. In fact, I'd say we only have one person with that sort of dedication in the schools, and she's not even a teacher at the schools (she's a parent, and an SDMC instructor).

Make sure you introduce yourself when DPatrick and I come to town!

by rrusczyk, Oct 21, 2006, 11:25 PM