Read other entries in this series here:
Part 1: Thinking it Through
Part 2: Planning Ahead
After much soul-searching and schedule-finagling, you’ve decided that a math team is in your future. Huzzah! Before you start bringing in the students, you’ll want to make sure you’re fast friends with your school’s office manager, who is usually in charge of updating the school’s event calendar. This will save you a ton of time because the front office will be able to field many parent questions without needing to contact you personally. I’ve laid out a plan of attack aligned with the school year so you don’t feel like everything needs to be done at once.
When should I start my math team?
You can start your team at any time during the year, but it helps if you start it after a schoolwide event like a concert or an open house. That way, you can have a math team sign up table where you can answer family questions and promote your awesome program!
School Year Guide to Math Team
This plan assumes you will start your math team meetings in mid-September. It can be modified to suit your needs. This plan also assumes your school is in Western Washington, and includes local and regional math competitions.
July / August
- Reserve the classroom space for your team. Fill out necessary site paperwork.
- Print up and fill out activity permission forms. You might want to add additional information to the standard permission slip — we add teacher’s name, grade, and e-mail address. When we had bus transportation available, we asked if students were bussers.
- Ask your school’s webmaster to post a blurb about your school’s math team on the school website.
- Give your school’s office manager a tentative calendar for math team meetings and events. If you don’t know the specific date of a competition, for example, make sure the event says “tentative weekend for Snowball Math Jam” or something similar.
- Extra credit: Contact the school district’s public relations representative to see how you can get in touch with them if your students are doing something exciting or noteworthy.
September
- Find out when your school’s open house or orientation nights are. Make a sweet Math Team sign (you might want to invest in a long-lasting vinyl one — these can be useful in helping parents find their students at a crowded math team competition), and have a table with information, permission slips, and a calendar of events.
- Decide if you want to have a separate Math Team parent night to provide additional information. Ours wasn’t terribly well-attended, but it was helpful because then families couldn’t make excuses like, “Oh, I didn’t realize I needed to pick up my student…”
- Speaking of which, talk with administration about what your school’s policy is when students’ rides don’t pick them up on time. If more than one person is in charge of your team, figure out a system for who will stay late with students.
- Have your first Math Team meeting! Your first meeting will probably focus on expectations and include a math-y ice breaker.
- If you’re a Title One school, contact the Title One coordinator to see if you can have snacks provided for your after school program.
- Extra credit: Contact Blue Highway Games and plan a school game night. Talk with your PTA to see if part of the proceeds can go directly to math team.
October
- Congratulate yourself on starting a math team!
- Make sure you have all students’ information organized, probably in a binder.
- Decide if you want to have an Excel document with students’ information. This can be helpful when it comes time to send home flyers, to see who’s been coming most often, and to figure out how many bus riders you have.
- Extra credit: Design a sweet T-shirt. If you’re a uniform school, see if you can get the shirts approved as uniform.
November
- Decide if you’re going to go to any winter competitions. If so, print up permission forms and field trip request forms. School administrators usually need to approve events 20 days prior.
- Print up sample tests and other materials if you choose to compete this winter.
- If your team is using merit badges, have a merit badge ceremony and consider displaying the badges publicly so other students might ask to get involved.
December
- The Thomas Jefferson Winter Middle School math competition is usually the first or second week in December.
- In 2010, Green Gables Elementary School had its first Snowball Math Jam for elementary schools in Federal Way. Keep your fingers crossed that it will happen again next year!
- Consider an end-of-the-year celebration.
- Have the principal read an announcement highlighting all the fun that’s been going on at math team, and encourage new students to sign up to join after winter break.
January
- Organize any new student information.
- Review expectations and possibly have another ice breaker at your first meeting of the year.
- Print materials for Math is Cool competition. The old tests from Math is Cool are good preparation for pretty much any math competition.
- The Mt. Rainier Math Invitational is usually the last week of the month.
February
- Make sure you’re balancing out competition preparation with fun activities to keep students excited about math team!
- Consider joining the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics. Their Teaching Children Mathematics publication has great activity ideas for math team.
- If your school has 6th graders, the Math is Cool 6th Grade Championships are held in the middle of the month.
- Extra credit: Find out when your school’s track team is planning on having practice. Some of your students may want to do both track and math team. How will you accommodate for that?
March
- The Math is Cool 5th Grade Championships are held in the middle of the month.
- Track teams often start practices this month.
April
- If you’re in Federal Way, sign up for Wildwood’s spring math competition!
- Join us the last Friday in April for our competition.
- The Math is Cool 4th Grade Championships are held in the middle of this month. Decide if you want to send 3rd graders to this competition as well.
- Several competitions are at the beginning of May, so you will probably want to print out permission slips for the May competitions this month.
May
- Find out if your school has an end-of-the-year awards ceremony. Ask if math team can be included. If the office staff is in charge of making awards, make sure all members’ names are spelled correctly and that you’ve made your requests as clear as possible. Provide a sample award, if possible.
- The Seahurst Elementary Math Bonanza is held in early May after school at Seahurst Elementary School in Burien.
- The Middle School Math Olympiad is held in early May at Marvista Elementary School in Normandy Park.
June
- Celebrate your students’ hard work! We’ve started a S’Mores party tradition, and we hand out paper plate awards for students who’ve been with us all year.
- Make sure all your math team information is organized so you won’t need to hunt for materials in the fall.
- Extra credit: Take a few minutes to reflect on what worked well this year and what you need to tweak for next year.
Hopefully this list is helpful rather than overwhelming. Many thanks to Tom Clymer, who has a bunch of great information on his Math Club’s page. Month icons from Trixinity.
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