Math Club

 

Club Activities:

• Find a “real-world” application of mathematics in your school. For example, on MathForum.org, one teacher suggested “I run a math club for elementary students (gr. 4 and 5) in my school, and one of our first activities this year will be to measure the cafeteria, and the tables, and find ways to rearrange them to be able to fit more tables without too much crowding. Our cafeteria doesn’t have enough tables to accommodate the number of students who need to eat, so this activity will provide a real life connection to mathematics.” (Teacher2Teacher forum, Q&A 568). Other ideas might involve sports measurements and timings, planting gardens and trees, and measuring the ratio of classroom space to public space such as hallways.
• Games and tournaments of games, especially mathematical games such as 3-dimensional tic-tac-toe, nim and all the variants of nim, and checkers and chess. Another teacher on MathForum.org says “strategy games are a big favorite for my middle school students. There are many different games that are quite applicable to mathematics. We have mini tournaments with our group. The game does not make that much difference as long as it is one that involves strategy or probability so that a discussion can evolve from the game. It can be as simple as a version of tic-tac-toe or nim to something more complex such as chess.”
• On March 14, i.e. 3/14, organize a Pi Day at your school. Some clubs even celebrate at 3 pm., ( i.e. 3/14 , 15oo hrs.) and serve pies. Of course, circle measurement, circumference and area computation are elementary activities, but discussion of pi can range to irrationality and how to calculate and approximate the value of pi.
• Talk to a local college or university Department of Mathematics and invite a mathematician to give a demonstration of current mathematics. Alternatively, connect with medical, pharmaceutical, or agricultural researchers and learn how they use mathematics. Marketing organizations sometimes use polling and statistical analyzes. Engineering and software firms are good sources of mathematically trained employees Ask friends, colleagues, and neighbors for the names of local businesses with employees who use mathematics in interesting or different ways who can come speak to your club.
• Have your students participate in a “World Wide Web mathematical scavenger hunt”. Have the students look for additional problem resources, formula pages, pages about pi, e, the golden ratio, mathematical bloopers and fallacies including “circle squarers” and “angle trisectors”
• Use convergence.mathdl.org and turnbull.mcs.st-and.ac.uk for math history and events that occurred on a specific day.
• Have a birthday party for mathematicians born in the month (See calendar section). With older, more mature students, a funeral oration or eulogy may be appropriately used on the anniversary of the death of a famous mathematician.
• Have students think about interesting problems to choose or write for each other, then have them go through and solve them either as a group activity, or as a homework assignment to be gone over as a group during the next class.
• Assign individual problems for oral group presentation, for practice.
• Have the principal or another teacher the studetns respect come and give them a short pep talk.
• Organize a competition between the students and the teachers at your school, and invite the student body to attend.
• Hold reunions to insspire your students, by exposing them to successful former members.
• One way to help high school students to master a subject is to have them teach it to someone else. Taking your high school club to a feeder middle school, two or three times a year, and having them plan the curriculum for those meeting, can reinforce basic concepts in them.

Suggestions from Sliffe nominations:

Each year in the spring the top 60 teams on the AMC 12 are asked to nominate a teacher they think deserves to win the Edyth May Sliffe Award for Distinguished MathematicsTeaching in theHigh School. From these nominations, over the past 4 years, we have gleaned a variety of suggestions for the Math Club Coach. We understand that no one teacher could do all of these things, but we hope you can find a suggestion or two which you can incorporate into your program, (We have paraphrased most comments, additional information from us on a student comment are in italics)

Contests

• Registering for competitions and math leagues ahead of time to provide plenty of on task practice.
• Applying for maximum funding from the high school promptly to minimize student and coach expenses.
• Fights to support the club against the hardships of cut budgets and uncooperative students.
• Send out public announcements and written notifications to students, to ensure they will be present and prepared for the test.
• Organize your own mathematics tournament
  • Registration
  • Event coordination
  • Organization
• Our teacher Coaches the Math and Science Club, for which he extensively and exhaustively labors in search for a multitude of practice tests. He commonly gets up at 4am on weekends and sacrificing Saturdays for the team’s tournaments.
• She manages registration for our numerous contest through out the year, and deals effectively with the organizational hassles of over 600 AMC competitors and over 100 AIME competitiors every year. Every week in which we do not have contests she prepares a practice. Her practices through out the year give us a great deal of additional preparation for the AMC contests.
• In preparation for the AMC tests or any other contest arrange to reserve a section of the school large enough for the math students on campus so that they could take the contest in a monitored, organized manner. (Sometimes this means putting in your request in the spring, when building use plans are being drawn up for the next year)
• Whenever the competitions are over, our teacher always explains the answers so that everyone in the class can understand them.
• At the end of the year, organize an award ceremony for whom ever won any sort of award in the various contests the club has participated in.

Clubs

• As a High School Teacher, aproach your “Feeder” middle schools and help them start or improve a math club
• She posts notices on the "Daily Bulletin" and broadcasts math events on the intercom virtually every day. She is also very generous with her praise and frequently announces the math team's achievements school-wide.
• Our teacher understands that many students participate solely for enjoyment and maintains a relaxed, friendly atmosphere at club events.
• Create a fun, enjoyable environment (with snacks!) which inspires many students and instills in them a great love for math for many years.
• She brings character to our team, instilling a love of learning rather than a thirst for victory.
• Our Math Team’s ideals: learning, solving and competing for life rather than for score.
• Our Teacher has given us all a love and enthusiasm for mathematics, connecting its beauty to specific problems and encouraging us to practice not for the contest, but for a command of careful problem-solving technique and for our own enjoyment.
• Since her arrival at the position, our focus has shifted from score pursuit to developing an appreciation for unusual mathematics and divergent thinking. Her gift - not our score - will last a lifetime.
• Although our sponsor takes pride in winning, he never pressures the team. Rather, he sticks to his motto that math competitions are about learning cool math and having fun in the process.
• Spend time working with the student leadership of your group to plan meetings and seek out new competitions.
• Work with frustrated students after school all week long to help them through the more difficult problems
• Every morning, our teacher arrives at school an hour early to practice with the team.
• He motivates dozens of students to attend the math team's Early-bird class at 6 a.m., and he is often at school working with team members until our night practices finish at 7 p.m.
• He encourages us a t every turn to be leaders, to take charge and master new math concepts in a cooperative environment.
• She has often encouraged students who could not make it to the competition to come and see her afterwards to look at the problems on the test and see which ones they can or cannot solve. This way they do not fall behind students from other schools who attend the meet.
• At a school with nearly seven hundred AMC participants and over 150 AIME qualifiers, the AMC and AIME practices were the most popular practices of the year, with over one hundred students in attendance. Because so many people attended these practices, there was a wide range of experience and ability. To satisfy the needs of all students, the coaches organized and ran a system in which three different levels of practice were offered simultaneously. As a result, math team veterans could be challenged by harder problems, while new members could also improve their math skills through problems appropriate to their level of experience.
• Provided resources and materials with which we could practice, always taking time to help us work through a complicated problem. As more students got involved, he opted to offer an independent study course, meeting weekly after school, during which he would give us problems at the AIME level and higher to prepare us for competitions and help us ggain a deeper understanding of mathematics.
• To encourage students who do not participate in the Math Club to participate he offered extra credit points to students in his normal classes who attended the Mu Alpha Theta competitions.
• Organizes math practices before and after school, as well as on Saturdays and six days a week during the summer.
• Our teacher also spent hours of his own time making booklets and packets with practice problems, formulas, and strategies to help us improve as math students.
• Distribute challenging sets of problems in practices each week, that force students to think about math in ways that would prove invaluable on the contests.
• Instruct students on the finer points of competition strategy, including time management, strategies for double checking work and ways of dividing up problems on team rounds.
• Providing our team members with past contests and time-limit advice
• Ask area businesses for small items to be used as prizes in practice competitions.
• Some of the events she's made possible for us are: a math competition for elementary school students; two meets that we host every year for other high schools; and huge turnouts for the competitions we attend (including the State Competition)
• She keeps in touch with all the math team members, even in the summer. Las summer, she organized a barbecue for the math team, including old math team alumni.
• If there is a University or College nearby, talk to them about someone who might be willing to mentor several students through a series of weekly problem solving seminars
• He is always up to date with the latest news, and is truly understanding about the time commitment that his athletes have towards their respective sports.
• At the end of the year plan a party, with a musical theme.
  • Example: Mathematical Morsels and Mayhem. A teacher composed an hour and a half long musical about some of the greatest figures in mathematical history. Most of the songs are easy to recognize, but with a mathematical twist. He is constantly adding and revising this show as he gets new ideas. Most recently, he has added a song in which Fermant is in constant sorrow (based on music from Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?) because the margin in his book is too small to fit his lovely proof of what is now known as Fermant’s Last Theorem.

Classroom

• Tell an appropriate number of math-oriented jokes in class to keep students interested during every moment of class.
• Each Monday after school, we meet in her clsassroom and she provides us study materials from past exams. Often she tells us stories relating to the topics we are doing, such as her calculus cats. There's the integral cat whos tale is bent like an integration sign. There's also the cat of continuity that glides, not walks across the floor.
  • Example: Like 3-D boxing important equations and demonstrating the concept of the absolute value by absolute valuing his depressed students to transform them into extra happy pupils.
  • Example: In AP Statistics for example, he runs ongoing statistics projects which the class does as a whole, and he uses statistical analysis to evaluate test grades. He does an excellent job in pacing difficult material and shows incredible enthusiasm for the subject.
• Teach math beyond the curricula by assigning various projects in which students research unique mathematical topics, including tensegrity and stellated icosahedrons made from origami paper
• Work with the school to allow students who are bored with their math classes, to take higher level classes, so they can be challenged properly at their level.
• Along with some other teachers, he convinced the school’s administration to start offering math electives in logic and number theory.
• Subscribe to many notable mathematics periodicals to allow students to study independently.
• Once a week, our teacher has each of her students hand in a short journal entry about their understanding of the material taught in class. She always takes the trouble to write personalized responses, which include words of encouragement, tips for solving tricky problems, explanations of difficult concepts, and much more.
• For the dedicated students and those most interested in math and science, our teacher helps them find challenges beyond the high school level. She is in constant contact with a nearby National Laboratory, finding mentors and thesis projects for her students. In the past, she has introduced her students to advanced fields such as robotics, particle physics, and neuro-circuitry, always with extra emphasis in mathematical modeling and programming.
• Provides various resources and advice to students, allowing them to learn eclectic areas of mathematics.
  • Example: Discrete Math and Linear Algebra classes, allow students to explore number theory and graph theory, subjects not discussed in regular high school math classes.
• Alternatively, provide independent study courses on specific topics for those students who finished all the regular classes.
  • Example: Several of us had become more advanced than the Geometry class that was the top class offered at our school. Our teacher created a special class for us, allowing us to meet during her prep period to study Algebra 2. She encouraged us to take an active role in designing the class, assigning our own homework and scheduling our own tests. She trusted us and expected us to take the math as seriously as she did, and we worked hard to meet her expectations.
• Over the summer, offer one or two levels of a math problem solving course that meets for four weeks.
  • Example: one section geared toward underclassmen in the morning and the advanced problem solving course in the afternoon. Each night, the teacher assigns problems from a work book and for the first hour and a half, we solve and discuss these problems as a class. After a quick break where we can buy soda and make popcorn, we are led back into the room for the contests. Each day, a new set of teams are picked and awarded points for problems from numerous problem sets that they get right. At the end of the course, there is an extensive award ceremony where many students are awarded prizes ranging from bookmarks to t-shirts to coffee mugs (items he collects through the year, at NCTM and such).
• Our teacher refuses to assign homework and instead calls it homefun. Additionally, tests are known as parties. He does, however, administer tests, which are days when students bring in snacks and soft drinks. On tests days, we relax and enjoy an hour of chess, card games, or circular tic-tac-toe, a modification of the classic game with added intricate strategy.
• Our teacher goes to great lengths to ensure that every student has a thorough understanding of the subject matter before advancing to the next topic. Because he turns every class into an open discussion, nobody leaves the classroom feeling left out. He also advances our mathematical thought process with each successive problem by teaching us new tricks to attack harder problems. By linking multiple concepts learned in the past, he ensures that we always have a complete understanding of all the materials learned throughout the year.
• His teaching methodology is very similar to his chalk board erasing methods. In order to erase a chalk board and have the end result look orderly, start by making one long swipe across the entire top of the chalk board. Follow this swipe by making vertical erasures going across the entire board, never leaving a sliver uncovered and taking as many strokes as necessary. Clean up the job with one swipe across the top, then the left edge, and finally one across the bottom edge. Not only does this look aesthetically pleasing, but it also sums up his teaching philosophy. By making that first initial swipe, he sets down the foundation for the problem, listing everything that needs to be known to reach the answer. All the vertical swipes going from left to right represent the multiple steps to solving the problems. He covers every aspect of the problem just like his eraser eventually goes over every square inch of the board. By the time the final clean up swipes are reached, the problem has been virtually solved by the class with his guidance. Those swipes are like him making sure that the actual question was answered and that all loose ends are cleaned up.
• Our teacher’s senior students are to understand enough to teach others or to write a thorough paper on math concepts. This is something she requires of all her students in the school’s highest-level course. What she teaches is not equations, or certainly not a list of rules learned by rote, but something far greater; in her class the knowledge she imparts to us transcends the normal conception of math and becomes something far greater: Understanding.
• Our teacher is perhaps most notable for her in-class curriculum, the work that affects all highly motivated mathematicians at our school, not just the competitors. "Elements of Mathematics" which, in addition to standard algebra and geometry, teaches probability, number theory, field theory, set theory, and formal logic. In this class she teaches how to write proofs and how to solve problems, skills that, in high school, are generally reserved for the most elite competitors. Instead, through her, any skilled and motivated student can learn advanced techniques for tackling problems, techniques which are powerful and versatile, and which extend beyond the problem at hand, for they are heuristic, not algorithmic. She opens the techniques of the "great" to students who would otherwise be merely "good".
• Our teacher is a math teacher who is not satisfied with merely presenting to his students what the textbook says; he seeks to instill a thorough understanding of every topic in us, and to do so, he devotes a large amount of time to writing solutions to hard problems, tutorials or difficult topics, and to integrating the use of technology in his pre-calculus and calculus course. We remember the class's amazement at seeing endless rows of math files on his laptop that he wrote during his teaching career of more than thirty years. We still remember how the beautiful graphs of what were boring equations fascinated us and deepened our understanding of conics.
• When teaching a course in mathematics, our teacher draws from sources that he has gathered from all corners of the world...He picks only the sources that teach the material in the best way, and finds them through exchange students and the Internet.
• He works harder than anyone else to make sure that math competitions are open to any one and he is also very helpful to those who are dedicated to the competitions
• Always ready with an open door, a friendly smile and free snacks.

General comments

• From Eugene, Oregon to Vancouver, British Columbia is about an 8-hour drive, making it both slightly shorter and less fun than an USAMO exam. As the coach of both our state and middle school MathCounts teams, she drove the eight of us up there for a regional competition in 2001. After getting a special bus driver’s license and renting a small bus, she was rewarded with eight hours of listening to us play Mafia.
• He volunteered his time and energy to support students’ extra-curricular activities, even working hands-on with the robotics team despite having to walk with a cane. His selflessness and determination in spite of the obstacles he faced continue to be a motivation for our success no matter how difficult the task. (Referring to a teacher who later died of his disease)
• She organized meetings with a nearby University professor, contacted contest organizers to register our team and provided the all important communications center for our team, sending out announcements, collecting permission forms and making sure that our achievements were recognized by the school. Since then she has spent countless weekends driving us to math competitions around the state and she has spent the weeks inbetween hunting us down to secure registration information and permission slips