Math Rules!

Until next year!

2010-07-09T14:06:00.005-04:00

Hello friends! It's been quite a while since I last posted on this blog. I really apologize for not having a better and more timely conclusion, but this is my temporary break from this blog. It's the summer so not much tutoring has been going on. I have had a really amazing time writing for it and I hope just one person got something out of it. I am wrapping up my year of service with the

Wrapping up

2010-05-28T10:55:00.009-04:00

There's less than one month left in the Boston Public School year (we're running a bit late because of "snow" days), but Math Rules! will be wrapping up in the next few weeks. I've been working on end of the year surveys for our teachers, volunteers, and students. I also helped put information together for a report. From both of these, I have some good news and good data to share with

Good luck 3rd and 4th graders!

2010-05-17T15:01:00.004-04:00

Tomorrow and Wednesday, 3rd and 4th graders will be taking the math MCAS at many schools. Good luck!This is what I gave my students as a good luck + encouragement:Good luck on your MCAS,Final tips:1) TAKE YOUR TIME!!2) Read instructions and problems carefully. Read one sentence at a time. Reread if you need to.3) Cross off answers that you’re sure are not right.4) Show ALL work, you can get

Student tutors

2010-05-12T12:22:00.004-04:00

Tutoring yesterday at the Tobin School involved more MCAS preparations and working in pairs. Students from the class next door came over to tutor the kids in my class. Again, this week, I concentrated on my girls and how they were doing. Some of the pairs worked well together but one of my girls made her partner a bit upset. It might've been my extra attention and my student got overexcited. So I

My weekend math

2010-05-10T16:07:00.005-04:00

Hi math fans! I'm just going to briefly talk about my experience with math over the weekend. I didn't get a chance to do any paper and pencil math, but I did watch a few basketball games and revisited one of my favorite awful-yet-amazing TV shows Xena: Warrior Princess.I don't get a chance to watch a lot of professional basketball, but one of my roommates is a die-hard Spurs fan. So we watched

When I grow up...

2010-05-05T12:10:00.010-04:00

I want to be older. It's been a few days since MAM ended, so now we're back to regular tutoring entries with a few extra MAM bonus days thrown in.For Math Rules! volunteers who are reading my blog, the following are my takeaway points:Check in with them and ask how things have been going before you start tutoring. It's a good gauge of how the session will go.Encourage your students in the

MAM Day 30: 0100 0010 0110 1001 0110 1110 0110 0001 0111 0010 0111 1001

2010-04-30T09:58:00.009-04:00

Today is the last day of Math Awareness Month! :( It's been an incredible month! I've learned so much about the importance of math in everyday life and how integral (hehe) it is in everyone's lives. From my first few giddy days of planning out the topics and drawing pandas, to the middle of the month where I struggled to stay on schedule, to some of my favorite posts: counting, math and language,

MAM Day 29: Are we there yet?

2010-04-29T11:09:00.006-04:00

We've covered math on the T, and math on foot, but math in a car is one of the obvious places where you'll find math. The speedometer is a great start, it's measuring speed in miles per hour. We can use the speedometer and road signs to know how much further we've got to go. If we've been traveling at roughly 70 miles/hour or MPH, and we're 200 miles away from our destination, we should get there

MAM Day 28: Math on foot

2010-04-28T10:06:00.008-04:00

To write this blog today, as a full time pedestrian and part time rider, I am continually interested in rates of walking behind other people, rates of running, juding speeds of cars, etc. So I searched rate of change, math problems that deal with rates of walking or running and found a few great examples. I found myself longing for my calculus days, when I could understand these pretty complex

MAM Bonus: Interview with my sister

2010-04-27T17:13:00.005-04:00

I called my sister yesterday to talk about how much math she uses in her school work. She's a second year architecture student at the University of New Mexico. I originally wanted to use it in a blog post, but we started talking about other math related things and I just thought it was interesting enough to get its own blog post. Now, my sister is about 7 times smarter than I am so I hope you'll

MAM Day 27: Optimization of space

2010-04-27T09:29:00.012-04:00

Hey math fans! Following yesterday's topic of packaging, today's topic is the optimization of space, something I've been looking forward to the entire month. I'm not sure why I'm so fascinated with the optimization in general, but the optimization of space is something I see it quite a bit in my day-to-day. Optimization generally refers to maximizing or minimizing a mathematical function and

MAM Day 26: Real World Geometry Part 3

2010-04-26T12:00:00.008-04:00

The last installment of real world geometry is packaging of food and other products. From Earth Day statistics: $1 out of every $11 Americans spend for food goes for packaging. If you're buying food at the grocery store, chances are you've experienced packaging and the incredible industry that is dedicated to researching and designing new and updated packaging. Packaging influences what catches

MAM Day 25: Real World Geometry part 2

2010-04-25T10:44:00.000-04:00

Today's post was supposed to be about real world applications of math and geometry in certain fields of work such as, but not limited to: construction, architecture, interior design, landscapers, chemistry and pharmaceutical research and development, software engineers and other computer related work, accountants, business, banking, environmental and biology research, etc. The list goes on and on

MAM Day 24: Real World Geometry part 1

2010-04-24T10:47:00.001-04:00

On Saturday, I participated in Opportunity to Serve through the Massachusetts Promise Fellowship (pictures to come soon!). There were five different projects in eastern Massachusetts, and I chose to go to the America SCORES project with World Cup Boston at Franklin Field / Harambee Park in Dorchester. Opportunity to Serve is a day of service, in conjunction with Global Youth Service Day, that is

MAM Day 23: Standardized Tests

2010-04-23T10:03:00.015-04:00

Did the picture above make you anxious? Do scantron sheets and filling in the bubbles not make sense to you? What are the chances that many of you know exactly what I'm talking about? Today's post is on standardized tests. I would guess it's been a while since some of you have taken a standardized test, but most Boston Public School students will take (or have taken) a standardized test this

MAM Day 22: Earth Day

2010-04-22T15:40:00.013-04:00

Today is Earth Day! Earth Day was started in 1970 to honor the Earth and to acknowledge our relationship to the environment. Many people around the world have special events to commemorate and education about keeping the environment healthy. Environmental activists and organizations try to start dialogs on major environmental issues and then work together to come up with effective strategies to

MAM Day 21: Math and nature

2010-04-21T15:08:00.008-04:00

There may be a small population of you out there who are still skeptical that math is everywhere. You don't believe me that you use math consciously on a day to day basis or you just don't agree that everyone does do math every day.Well, today's post in preparation for Earth Day (April 22), I'll be talking about how mathematical patterns surround us in nature! First we have to discuss two things,

MAM Day 20: Graphs, charts & visual math

2010-04-20T20:46:00.005-04:00

Some of us are visual learners, but most students are able to read and extract information from charts and graphs by the time they reach middle school. Charts and graphs are visual representations of data "represented by symbols, such as bars in a bar chart, lines in a line chart, or slices in a pie chart". I'm sure most, if not all of you, have seen a chart at some point this past week, or even

MAM Day 19: Marathon Monday

2010-04-19T09:19:00.000-04:00

In honor of the 2010 Boston Marathon, today is a shortened blog post with marathon related math. Celebrating the 114th Annual Boston Marathon, 2,500 years since the first marathons were run in Greece, and celebrating the oldest annual marathon, the Boston Marathon is kindof a big deal here in Boston.Marathons are long distance foot races, usually with a distance of 26.2 miles or 42.195

MAM Day 18: Pop music & judging

2010-04-18T13:59:00.010-04:00

Although the link between math and pop music isn't as theoretical or mathematical, today's topic: pop music and the rise of talent shows on TV is much more exciting to write about.My original interest in pop music isn't just my bad taste in music, it was the Billboard charts and other top charts that we hear so much about when we flip on music TV channels or the radio. I used to watch MTV for the

MAM Day 17: Music and Math

2010-04-17T12:36:00.004-04:00

In trying to do a blog post on music and math, I very quickly got bogged down with very technical music knowledge that I don't have. Although it's incredible how linked music and math are, I don't have enough music theory under my belt to speak very intelligently about it. I hope you will understand if I explain just what I do know about the links between music and math.As a child, my mother

MAM Day 16: US Census 2010

2010-04-16T09:14:00.000-04:00

Friday April 16 is the deadline for the United States Census! If you haven't filled it out yet, please do so. Although I was troubled by the race questions, I still believe it's very important for everyone to participate, it's our civic duty! The United States Census is a decennial (once every 10 years) census mandated by the United States Constitution., but funding, services, and politics all

MAM Day 15: Death and Taxes

2010-04-15T10:14:00.012-04:00

The late and great Benjamin Franklin said this great quote "...in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." April 15th is the deadline to file federal and state income taxes. I suppose I should've written this blog earlier in the month to send out any links or additional information, but as a tax procrastinator, I myself didn't file until Monday the 12th. Lucky for

MAM Day 14: Savings accounts & interest

2010-04-14T10:34:00.005-04:00

Lets stop talking about spending money and buying things when I don't have money. The better idea is to not buy things, even if they're on sale, but I don't have that sort of self control.Money doesn't grow on trees!Today's math awareness is how to save money. How can we get the most out of a savings account? My experience with saving money is having a savings account that's separate from my

MAM Day 13: Sales and deals

2010-04-13T10:42:00.001-04:00

Today's post is how to get the best deals when you see sales, discounts, reduced price items, etc. This is where math really comes in handy!Some of the best shoppers have a good eye for quality clothes and quality deals. I discovered this when I was preparing my gala look in the week or so before our Gala. I got to shop with several different co-workers and got a feel for how people think when

MAM Day 12: Money and change

2010-04-12T11:41:00.010-04:00

It only took 12 days for me to talk about one of the most obvious examples of daily math! The next few days will be related to money and how we deal with it every day or almost every day.Paying for goods, food, and services is a regular occurence. I would guess that everyone has to use money in one way or another daily, and if not daily weekly. We need money to survive, to make a living, to

MAM Day 11: Relative size & clothing sizes

2010-04-12T11:21:00.011-04:00

This post is late too. My apologies!Quite related to Day 10 on calories and diets, my schedule for day 11 was to discuss relative size and clothing sizes. As some of you may know, I'm a petite, tiny, mini, and "fun sized" person in comparison to most people. Let's put it this way, my 5th graders that I tutor on Fridays are all taller than I am. 5th graders! This post is my rant on why being small

MAM Day 10: Calories and Diets

2010-04-12T09:49:00.010-04:00

So sorry this post is late! See my previous post for more details. Moving on, day 10's topic was supposed to be about the other side of food, counting calories, dieting, and understanding the nutrition facts that accompany food products found in the grocery store. You've seen them, lets talk about what kinds of information we can learn from reading the nutrition facts. This blog post are merely

MAM weekend

2010-04-11T20:54:00.004-04:00

Very sorry my weekend posts will be late! I took the weekend 'off' and did nothing of consequence on Saturday, then spent Sunday out in the sun instead of blog or even try to catch up with my posts. Instead of trying to cram and put up mediocre posts for Day 10 and Day 11 they will both be posted sometime tomorrow along with Day 12. I'll get more on top of posting. When I started Math Awareness

MAM Day 9: Cooking and Baking

2010-04-09T11:51:00.008-04:00

Rainy days like today are perfect for staying inside and cooking a nice meal or baking some cookies don't you think? Today's math awareness is a brief look into the math that you need to do sometimes when you're cooking or baking. For those of you who use recipes for cooking, you'll understand the math you sometimes use when cooking or baking. For example, this fried rice recipe looks amazing and

MAM Day 8: Time Part II

2010-04-08T10:49:00.000-04:00

Today is Boston Partners in Education's big Gala, so this is the downtime I've got to blog before the storm.I was planning on discussing time zones, the passing of time beyond 24 hours, and how it still relates to math today. This was before I found this website that has lots of information and pretty pictures and animations. I'll include links from various websites because they explain things

MAM Day 7: Time

2010-04-07T13:14:00.012-04:00

Math Awareness Day 7, TIME! Ironic twist to today's MAM post - I have run out of time to post during the day today and have to leave the office at 2. [Update below!] While you're anxiously waiting my blog post (jk), can I get any comments on what you think so far? Have you given math a second thought this week? Has anything been helpful or interesting? Please let me know!Rock on math fans!Aha!

Lets do homework!

2010-04-07T10:30:00.005-04:00

And now for something completely different: mini break from Math Awareness Month for an update on my tutoring sessions yesterday. Don't worry, I'll put up today's MAM post later.I worked with some of my fourth graders yesterday. There was another sub in the classroom, but this sub had things much more under control. He put free time on the table and asked for suggestions, but since the kids

MAM Day 6: Math & Games

2010-04-06T13:20:00.002-04:00

Today's topic: Math and games. I'll be discussing two main types of games today, computer games and card games. I remember my first day of afterschool tutoring at MathSTARS like it was last year...I came into a room full of strangers - students and tutors I'd never met before. Cautiously and timidly I was introduced to everyone. As everyone got back to their work, I tried to start up a

MAM Day 5: Sports and Math

2010-04-05T13:05:00.003-04:00

In honor of the official Math Awareness Month theme, today's blog post is about sports and the underlying math that allows us to participate in and keep track of sports.Being a big nerd, I have very limited experience with sports. Unfortunately, I did not make the basketball team and I was not coordinated enough to do anything else in grade school. I managed to eke through gym class and pass it

MAM Day 4: Math & language

2010-04-04T16:05:00.002-04:00

I've thought about the connections between math and language a few times throughout my time at Boston Partners. Working with students, I find this connection quite often when we're doing word problems. I also notice that students don't read the instructions very often. Sure, we're doing math, but they skip the instructions (which always tell you how to approach the problem, what the problem is

MAM Day 3: Estimation

2010-04-03T13:32:00.005-04:00

Yesterday we talked about counting, which is getting an accurate number. Today I'll briefly talk about estimation, how, when, and where we use it. My first thought was estimating how many jellybeans are in the jar. Thanks to Wendy, who is the Math Rules! Manager at Boston Partners in Education, we have Easter candy to munch on. Chocolate isn't my favorite, but the jars full of jelly beans are

MAM Day 2: Counting

2010-04-02T10:18:00.010-04:00

Wow! Thank you to everyone who came by for a visit yesterday. I'm happy to announce that thanks to Google Analytics, I had 114 pageviews yesterday, which is more than a third of my total pageviews. A record 57 visitors came by which is almost 40% of my total visitors since I started using Analytics. Hah, even blogs run on a background of stats and math. I'm such a nerd...Today's math subject is

MAM Day 1: Weather

2010-04-01T10:59:00.002-04:00

To kick off Math Awareness Month, let's talk about the weather! There was a super warm weekend in the middle of March when my roommate and I took a nice stroll outside for the first time in months. I woke up with my window open, freezing cold air was streaming in my room so I mistakenly thought I would need a jacket to go to the grocery store. My roomie told me it was 60-some degrees outside and

Math Awareness Month unofficial mascot

2010-04-01T10:04:00.004-04:00

To kick off Math Awareness Month, I'd like to introduce the official mascot of the Math Rules! blog and the unofficial MAM mascot: Albino Math Panda! His nickname is AmpI made him after the Massachusetts Promise Fellowship staff sent me a care package one day in February. He'll be making appearances this month from time to time. Shh, don't tell anyone, but I've also drawn pictures for the blog, I

Math Awareness Month

2010-03-30T14:23:00.005-04:00

I'm getting ready for Math Awareness Month (MAM) by putting together 30 days of every day math. I hope to make these real world examples of math that we are doing on a daily basis. Some of these examples apply to everyone, some are more targeted towards students while others are more "adult" types of math (think taxes!). I tried my best to pull from lots of aspects of life, but I think I found a

Math Awareness Month is coming!

2010-03-29T16:10:00.007-04:00

Did you know that Math Awareness Month has been held in April for the last 24 years? I sure didn't! Math Awareness Month was started in April 1986 by President Ronald Regean who emphasized that a good math education is crucial for highly skilled professions in the sciences such as "medicine, computer sciences, space exploration, the skilled trades, business, defense, and government." We may

Opposite day?

2010-03-26T15:45:00.004-04:00

I like to blame things on the weather because it doesn't make logical sense. I should probably do more research into weather and how it affects human behavior, but the flip flop weather change from yesterday's 65 degrees to today's snow flurries and wind chill are to blame for the odd student behaviors I saw today at tutoring.In my 5th grade class today, we worked on an assessment work packet

Computer math games

2010-03-26T10:52:00.004-04:00

Calculation Nation a website our ED sent to the office. It has eight math games that are pretty challenging. I'd say it's targeted towards middle schoolers because some games involve fractions, factors, multiplication, strategic thinking, and some luck. I've been trying to beat the computer on Ker-Splash, and I haven't even gotten close!Good luck and may the math be with you!.

Compounded mentoring moments

2010-03-24T10:23:00.007-04:00

I guess the school year has gotten into that slump where there isn't anything drastically new to report from my volunteer/tutor sessions, so today I'll be talking about how I've developed mentor relationships that start from "mentoring moments" as our Executive Director calls them. This came up for a number of reasons. Yesterday I went to an info session about my AmeriCorps program, the

Tricky students

2010-03-19T16:00:00.006-04:00

Today's volunteer sessions went pretty much the same as usual. My 5th graders worked on division problems. It was asking two ways to divide and I was stumped to help them with their worksheets. The long division or the standard algorithm we got through very quickly. The second way to solve a division problem, we used partial sums to get back to the answer. If anyone has any other solutions for

Student juggling

2010-03-18T10:23:00.005-04:00

I managed to work with three different students on Tuesday at MathSTARS and all three students got a significant amount of work done, which is amazing! I don't really know how it happened, but I started on a physics lab with C and we got halfway through before she got bored with it and moved on to other homework. In the meantime, I switched and worked with V on his math packet. He's a very sharp

Pi Day + 1

2010-03-15T13:59:00.005-04:00

Pi day celebrated on 3/14 (sometimes at Pi time at 1:59:26 p.m) celebrates the unique irrational number pi. I remember in grade school celebrating with pies, possibly pizza, and other round foods that embody pi. A dino comic about piPi is approximated as 3.1415926535..., this website has calculated it to the millionth digit. My calculus teacher in high school had memorized a thousand digits the

Vacation week

2010-03-15T11:57:00.003-04:00

Apologies for the lack of posts last week, I was on a retreat with the Massachusetts Promise Fellows up in New Hampshire. We had a few trainings, workshops, and lots of Fellow bonding time. I taught a workshop on making eggrolls and managed to smell up the resort hallway for a few days. I also helped teach some Fellows how to ski for the first time. Lots of good fun!I'll update this afternoon

Multiplication approaches

2010-03-05T16:54:00.000-05:00

When I started volunteering in my fifth grade class, we had an exercise that says "Solve this equation in two different ways." I panicked because I had ever only learned one way - the standard algorithm for multiplication.Luckily, I've been working on enough multiplication tables now that I have a variety of ways to solve multiplication problems! It's great, my students have taught me a thing or

Plus or minus

2010-03-05T10:20:00.008-05:00

Yesterday while I was signing myself out for lunch and a quick run to the bank, I noticed that many of my co-workers use the plus or minus sign to indicate an approximation of when they would be coming back to the office. I've always kind of enjoyed the symbol and even considered getting a pretentious plus or minus tattoo somewhere. Luckily for me, I decided against it.For me, the plus or minus

Greg Tang: Place Values

2010-03-02T11:48:00.012-05:00

Part two of the workshop is place values and Greg making us compute in different bases. Place values boiled down are groupings of different size units. Although many students learn about place values in elementary school, we don't spend enough time teaching students to really understand place values enough so when they get to adding and most importantly subtracting, that they understand

Greg Tang math workshop

2010-03-01T16:06:00.011-05:00

I got an incredible opportunity to attend a math support session/workshop with children's math book author Greg Tang today. This post is pretty numbers heavy, but if you skip to the end (where the other picture is), I've put in my two cents on the first half of what we covered today.We started with a refresher course from Greg's 1st session back in December which covered breaking numbers down

Barf, tears, and crushes

2010-02-26T16:27:00.001-05:00

I will apologize in advance for this post and the title, but if you read on, it sums up my tutoring today very nicely.I had the opportunity to help in another classroom today, a 3rd grade Sheltered English Instruction (SEI) class with roughly 20 squirmy third graders doing multiplication word problems. I got a warm welcome chorus of "Hi Ms. Minh!" from 20 eager and excitable children and a speed

We like fractions!

2010-02-24T12:26:00.007-05:00

Yesterday's tutoring involved an introduction to fractions in my 4th grade class. I think it's cool to see the intrinsic nature of understanding fractions. For students, doing math computations with fractions quickly becomes difficult. Even as adults, we shy away from fractions, decimals, percentages, and ratios, which all express the same ideas. It's hard to conceptually think of a quarter of a

Group work pt II

2010-02-18T12:24:00.006-05:00

So how does a Math Rules! volunteer manage a small group effectively? I found an article online that is pretty dense in content, and doesn't even address group work in schools. I still thought that many of the main ideas apply to working with a small group of elementary school students. The Personal Functions section is especially nice to note. The Managing conflict, Stopping conflict escalation,

Group work pt I

2010-02-18T11:42:00.013-05:00

Before coming to Boston Partners in Education and becoming a Math Rules! volunteer, I had never worked with and helped tutor a small group of students on math before. My personal experience with math in elementary school and higher was doing individual math homework and discussing problems in class. I rarely worked with another student on class problems except in fifth grade. I was given an "

Too much candy?

2010-02-16T15:06:00.002-05:00

The kids were a little hopped up on an entire day of sugar last Friday. It took a lot more effort for me to keep them focused on their work. They had a substitute so we had a review worksheet the kids had to get through. Adding and subtracting decimals and then comparing decimals ( < , > , = ) that sort of busy work. I managed to convince them that the comparing decimals side was much easier, and

Valentines Day

2010-02-14T12:53:00.002-05:00

Special Valentines Day Blog Post!I've been reading xkcd for a while now. It's a funny and nerdy webcomic about math, science, computer science, and silliness. This one is one of my favorites: Serpinski's ValentineA math inspired poem: MIT Alum David Feinberg's poem: The Square Root of 3Steven Strogatz's guest column on the differential equation elements of love..

Tutoring resources pt. I

2010-02-11T16:26:00.002-05:00

Hello math tutors and supporters! This blog post contains resources and interesting things to think about when working on math with students:Short and sweet article on tutoring tips to use with students---------------TERC's library of free information about the Investigations math curriculum that the Boston Public Schools uses. Includes overviews of what grades cover in the year, sample sessions

Fish fish fish fish fish fish

2010-02-08T15:48:00.006-05:00

I've been perusing through the blogosphere to try and find content that applies to math tutoring and math topics. Turns out there are lots of math nerds out there. And I thought I was the only one. Though statistically speaking that's impossible...My supervisor sent me a link to a new blog series on math from Steven Strogatz. Over the next few weeks, he'll be covering math topics starting with

Giving them space

2010-02-04T10:42:00.000-05:00

Another great day at the Sportsmens' Tennis Club and MathSTARS. I find there are very few days that I don't enjoy at MathSTARS. The students are such great kids, hard working students, and very dynamic personalities.I sat in the quiet room yesterday just to mix things up a bit. The quiet room is the designated room for people who don't want loud music or distracting conversation. Students who

Length?

2010-02-04T10:10:00.000-05:00

I want to apologize for the length of my posts. I try to keep it short, but I end up telling a story of what happened at tutoring. Then I add in commentary, and side notes, and the pictures.Blogs are interesting in that way I guess. Long blog posts usually turn people off and they skip over to the next thing. In a time of technological ADD, diminishing time and financial resources, and ever

Money subtraction

2010-02-03T10:05:00.004-05:00

Working with money and math has always been a fairly easy thing for me, just because it's so concrete, it makes sense in the real world, and everyone has had to deal with it in one way or another (unfortunately). I wanted to help my students be able to easily compute money math because it matters in the real world (as opposed to abstract uses of Calculus in the real world).The class was working

Math Education Funding

2010-01-26T16:13:00.006-05:00

So I've been looking for math and tutoring blogs to read through and learn more about math and science education. I have a few resources and links that I will be putting up tomorrow, but today I'm going to talk about this article that I found at Wild About Math.It's about a $200 million donation from Intel to support Math and Science programs and educators. A large portion of the money will be

National Mentoring Day + Month!

2010-01-21T16:34:00.002-05:00

Happy National Mentoring Day and Month! Today celebrates mentors who have made a difference in the lives of others, so go out and thank the people who have mentored you!As part of the celebration, I attended Youth Mentoring day as presented by the Highland Street Corps Ambassadors of Mentoring at the Massachusetts State House. It was a very nice program with lots of appreciation for legislators

MathSTARS, strength-based approach

2010-01-21T15:57:00.001-05:00

So I've been volunteering with an organization called MathPower that has an afterschool math tutoring program called MathSTARS that provides tutoring and mentoring help for middle school students in the Boston area. I've been volunteering for almost a year and go in once a week to help any students who need help.Yesterday I got to work with a young man, B, whom I hadn't interacted with much and

MLK Day

2010-01-19T14:54:00.004-05:00

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Jr.'s Day of Service at Northeastern. Working with the Massachusetts Promise Fellowship, approximately 400 young people came out on our day off to do some service in the Boston area. I didn't know what to expect and hadn't been told much about what I would be doing in the day. Luckily for me, I was told I would be a point person for a group going to Volunteers of

New Year

2010-01-14T11:28:00.002-05:00

It's been a while since I last updated and I apologize for the hiatus. Happy New Year! Here's to hoping that 2010 will be a great year for everyone out there.I missed out on volunteering last week and didn't get a chance to catch up with my teachers. Unfortunately, my schedule will be changing in the near future and I need to figure out some logistics. I hope this means I'll have more time to

Strengths and weaknesses

2009-12-10T12:48:00.001-05:00

Working in small groups, I've found that my students are at similar levels of math ability. In talking with other volunteers, what really surprises me is that their strengths and weaknesses rotate. One student may be really strong in one aspect of fractions, but will not quite understand long division as well. Another student may excel in long division but don't quite grasp the least common

Candy canes and fractions

2009-12-10T12:27:00.003-05:00

Yesterday was even more miserable than in my previous post. I woke up to snow on the ground, which quickly progressed to blustery wind and freezing rain. I went and bought candy canes for my tutees because this is the last week I'll be working with them until the beginning of next semester. Walking to my schools, I think the candy canes comforted me more than my soaking socks and wet

Connections

2009-12-03T11:11:00.002-05:00

After a few weeks of volunteering, it seems like I'm slowly but surely building relationships with my students.One of my groups has been touch and go because the math format changes from week to week. Sometimes we're working on reviewing for a test and playing a Jeopardy game, and other weeks we're doing group work on a new topic. This week we worked on arrays and played a game with different

24 can arrays

2009-11-19T11:06:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I worked in two of my classrooms. My other two classrooms I didn't make it to because of some miscommunications, but I went after school and talked to the teachers about what had happened. Although I couldn't make it to the volunteering session, I think it was important for me to contact them personally and let them know what's up. I also asked about next Wednesday. BPS is on half day

Volunteer surveys

2009-11-17T12:05:00.001-05:00

We're working on getting volunteer surveys out sometime this week. This year we're trying to get more feedback from all involved parties in Math Rules! (students, teachers, volunteers, site coordinators, schools, and staff) so we're trying out more surveys. We're hoping for a significant response rate so we can continually improve the program.I want to start promoting the blog as soon as possible

Catching up

2009-11-10T14:33:00.003-05:00

Hi there, I've been working on the logistics of the blog. I'm trying to get it cleaned up and ready to be put up for people to actually comment and give input. Last Wednesday I went to two of my schools and worked with small groups again. I got a first hand experience of frustration and another experience of groups not working well together.At my first school, small groups were reviewing for a

1st week

2009-11-02T10:58:00.001-05:00

After emailing the Math Rules! volunteers, I've gotten a few responses on how the first few sessions/first week went. Most of the responses I've gotten were positive, things going as smoothly as first days go. Many of our volunteers will be starting this current week so I can put up more responses of 1st sessions next week. One of our volunteers did have a question about keeping students focused

1st day

2009-10-29T11:27:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was my first day of volunteering with Math Rules! and it was both nerve-wracking and relatively comfortable at the same time. I've signed up to help in four different classrooms at three different schools, which seems like a lot but it wasn't too bad. To start the day off, it was miserably rainy, windy, and cold all at the same time. My downstairs neighbor also parked behind me and I

Faxes galore

2009-10-27T11:28:00.000-04:00

W is out today so I get all the faxes to myself. I'm snacking on coco puffs and trying to organize everything. There are so many forms to give out and get back, it's incredible. Not to mention each student has multiple forms and they don't ever come back in neat faxes organized by student and/or school. I guess this is how you keep faxes interesting.

Math Rules! Blog

2009-10-26T15:28:00.004-04:00

First week of volunteering! I met with one of our first new volunteers JD today at one of the schools. Our volunteers will be starting all of this week and next week, I'm trying to meet with most of the new volunteers so they know where to go and who to contact.I'm going to start volunteering on Wednesdays, I'm both excited and nervous. Being the new kid in class is tough. What if the kids don't