Seeking, Now Found! Teachers with Great Ideas to Teach Children Math in Somerville!

Many teachers have great ideas on how to make their classrooms a better place for their students to learn math.  The teachers’ ideas frequently outrun the budget schools have for supplies and their own ability to subsidize their classroom.  The Somerville Mathematics Fund tries to fill this need through the generosity of their donors:  John Bullock, Jay Landers and Jasper Lawson, the Apple Tree Fund supported multiple grants and Ersin Dur, William Kuhlman, Winter Hill Bank and Rebecca Wood-Spagnoli each sponsored a teacher's grant.  The following teachers won grants to encourage and support mathematics achievement in the classrooms of Somerville.

The Math Fund wants to thank John Bullock for generously underwriting the following teacher grants:

• Julia Allen, East Somerville Community School Unidos (1st), Math Centers Materials
• Rebecca Byard, Brown School (K), Math Manipulatives
• Janice Fahey-Flynn, Argenziano School, (ELL 1st, 2nd), Math Games 
• Michael Fitzpatrick, St. Catherine School, (1st), Measurement Manipulates
• Diana Garity, Argenziano School, (4th), Sumdog & Math Manipulatives
• Lindsay Garofalo, ESCS (1st SEI), Fire Kids Tablets
• Evelyn Gibson, SHS (Alg. Special Ed), Algebra Manipulatives
• Caitlin Harper, WinterHill Community Innovation School (integrated K), Math Manipulatives
• Rene Holtzman, Argenziano School, (1st, SEI), Little Math Readers Classroom Library
• Debra Hurley, Kennedy School, (2nd), Hubbard Orbiter Planetarium
• Leah Jaenicke, Argenziano School, (1st, SEI), Math Manipulatives
• Julie Marie Jasper, Brown School, (4th), Math Learning Centers
• Julie Jones & Lauren McGlashing, Capuano Early Childhood Center, (K), Family Math Night
• Aileen Martinez-Garced, ESCS (1st), Math Games & Math Nights
• Alexandra Mastria, Winter Hill Community Innovation School, (6th), Coordinate White Boards
• Maddie Mayerson, Healey School, (1st), Math Manipulatives
• Joan McGinty, WSNS (K), Light Table
• Mary Beth Morgan, Healey School, (K), Math Manipulatives and Math Story Books for Reading Bags
• Cassie Regan, Healey School, (1st), Math Manipulatives
• Amanda Saillant, Winter Hill Community Innovation School (SMILE), Ellison SureCut Math Die Set
• Tracy Selig, St Catherine School, (2nd), Math Manipulatives
• Danielle Shulman, WSNS, (4th), Math Games

The Math Fund wants to thank  Jay Landers and Jasper Lawson for generously underwriting the following teacher grants:

• Elizabeth Amero, Argenziano School, (ELL K-8), Math Manipulatives
• Yasmina Belatreche, Winter Hill Community Innovation School, (6th-8th math SEI), IXL

The Math Fund wants to thank the Apple Tree Fund for generously underwriting the following teacher grants:

• Lorin Desrochers, Brown, (6th), Math Manipulatives and Games

• Donna Driscoll, Argenziano & ESCS (math coach), ThinkTank

The Math Fund wants to thank each of the following for generously underwriting a teacher grant:

Ersin Dur:

• Kim Conley, Healey School (K), Math Manipulatives and Math Story Books for Reading Bags

Jay and Lali Haines:

• Samantha Song, Kennedy School (1st), Math Manipulatives

William Kuhlman:

• Denise Marie Lavey, ESCS (1st, SEIP), Math Manipulatives and Games

Rebecca Wood-Spagnoli:

• Sarah Soares, Argenziano, (K), Math Manipulatives

Winter Hill Bank:

• Julia Kimball, Healey School (K SEIP), Math Manipulatives and Math Story Books for Reading Bags

And Last, but not least, we have a group of generous donors who together made each of the following grants possible:

• Lukas Sisco, Winter Hill Community Innovation School, (after school coordinator), Student-Driven Business and Engineering Math Nights

• Kristen Tuxbury, St Catherine School, (1st), Legos for Math

• Scott Weaver, ESCS, (7th-8th), IXL for 4th graders

The Somerville Mathematics Fund was chartered in 2000 to celebrate and encourage achievement in mathematics in the city of Somerville, Massachusetts.  Over sixteen years, the Somerville Math Fund has awarded $92,676 in teacher grants in the city of Somerville.

In early April, the fund will be seeking applications from outstanding math and science students who reside in Somerville for college mathematics scholarships.  The Somerville Math Fund scholarships are $1,000/year for up to 4 years for students who lived in Somerville while in high school.  Links to the scholarship application form is available at  www.somervillemathematicsfund.org   For more information, to volunteer or to make a tax-deductible contribution, please contact Erica Voolich (617-666-0666 or mathfund@gmail.com).

The link to this post is http://somervillemathematics.blogspot.com/2016/01/seeking-now-found-teachers-with-great.html

"Houston -- no, Somerville, We've got a Problem!!"

Hard to believe, but the news of our teacher grants has really gotten out.
The deadline has passed, the Somerville Math Fund board meets next week to review the applications.

You know from reading past blog posts, that we have sponsored great ideas to enrich, support and encourage all levels of math learners in the the classrooms of Somerville K-12.

Everything the Somerville Math Fund does is a result of our wonderful donors and volunteers -- we have no employees.

So what is the problem?
We have so many more grant applications than ever before, we have a 35% increase in deserving applications!!
So, this "busts the budget"!!

How can you help?
Can you sponsor a grant?
Each teacher grant is at most $500.
An extra donation, sponsoring a grant, would make a difference on the help we can give in the classrooms of Somerville.
I need to know ASAP, because the Somerville Math Fund board meets next week to make the decisions on who we can fund.

Email me at math fund@gmail.com and let me know how you can help.
Then put a check in the mail [Somerville Math Fund, 244 Summer St, Somerville MA 02143].
If you have questions and would like to hear more details about the grants, email me and we'll set up a time to talk.

I appreciate all the extra support you can give.
Thanks.


The link to this post is http://somervillemathematics.blogspot.com/2016/01/houston-no-somerville-weve-got-problem.html

Have a Great Idea for Your Somerville Students? Apply for a Math Grant!

Every year the Somerville Mathematics Fund offers teacher grants for K-12 teachers in Somerville who have interesting and exciting ideas to support math learning and enrichment for their students.  The grant is open to teachers in all of the schools in Somerville, both public and parochial.  The grant application is on the Somerville Mathematics Fund website and is due by January 8, 2016.

The maximum amount of any grant is $500 per year.  Previous winners are welcome to apply again as long as they have completed their report on the previous grant.  You can read about last year’s grant winners on the Somerville Mathematics Blog or by requesting a copy of this year’s annual newsletter to be mailed in early December.

The Somerville Mathematics Fund, was chartered in 2000 to celebrate and encourage achievement in mathematics in the city of Somerville, Massachusetts.  Over fifteen years, the math fund has awarded  $79,640 in teacher grants in the city of Somerville.  You might want to listen to our  TEDxSomerville talk on the work of the Somerville Math Fund

to learn about the various things the math fund is doing.

In early April, the Somerville Math Fund will be seeking applications from students who reside in Somerville for college mathematics scholarships.  The application will be available on 

www.somervillemathematicsfund.org.  

For more information, to volunteer or to make a tax-deductible contribution, please contact Erica (617-666-0666 or mathfund@gmail.com)

The link to this post is http://somervillemathematics.blogspot.com/2015/12/have-great-idea-for-your-somerville.html
©Erica Dakin Voolich 2015

11th Annual Scrapheap Showdown-- Sort It Out!

On October 25, 18 teams of 3 high school students each from Somerville gathered in Gantcher Gym at Tufts University to compete in the eleventh annual Scrapheap Showdown.  Along with the usual interesting “junk” in the center of the room when the students walked in, there was paper, lots of foam core, plus of string and tape.  The students were given their challenge: to build a machine that would sort “coins” from Roundlandia — spherical glass coins of different sizes, each into their own receptacle.

The teams worked intensely, building, testing and adjusting their sorting machines.  

They needed to learn how to not only sort the glass spherical coins by size, but also, they needed to sort out counterfeit coins made of plastic or metal which were the same size as one of the legal coins.

Time was called after 3 1/2 hours.  Now was the time for the competition.  

The teams were judged on the number of correct coins in the right container, counterfeits elsewhere, with a bonus for being able to have the number of each coin displayed at the end and all the coins poured into the hopper together, not one at a time.

Each of the eighteen sorters were interesting and sported differences for sorting the coins by size.  A couple of them even had a “balance” to weigh and redirect the two different counterfeit coins, others separated out the metal “coins” using a magnet.

The students' sorters competed against each other.  The team with the highest overall score, was “3 Musketeers” (Pratrik Maharjan, Anmol Saini, and Henry Schneiderbeck ).  

Second place was the “Rasberry Lime Seltzer” (Alex Costa, Gabriel Bruno Parreira, and Ben Stevens).  

Third place was “Team Stats” (Jonathan Cabral and Bishan Rai).  

Fourth and fifth place had a tie score, and fourth was determined by shortest time to complete the sort.  Fourth place was "Rag Tek" (Anoush Khan, Gavin LaWhite and Daniel Strauss).  

Fifth place was “Lady Highlanders” (YuYing Chen, Lourdes Jean-Louis and Priscila Ponce). 

Sixth place was "Siri is Undefined"  (Kristina Gurung, Tayara Romero, and Anaya Reneé Luz).

Seventh place was "÷ and Conquer" (Nikolas Protopapas, Lucas Sargent, and Luca Duclos-Orsello).

Eighth place was "e to the iπ" (David Matthews, Anmol Maini, and Richie Lavey).

The teams could choose their prize in the order they finished.    The prizes donated were: three $100 gift cards (donated by Anne Button, Chase Duclos-Orsello and Monica Fernandes), four Red Sox tickets (donated by Sam Voolich), three $50 RedBones BBQ gift cards, eight passes Museum of Fine Arts and nine passes to the Rembrandt Exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts (donated by PriceWaterHouse), 3 $25 Amazon gift cards (donated by Susan Weiss) and 6 and 4 “Loaf of Bread” tickets from When Pigs Fly.

This event was for both fundraising and an intellectual challenge--all funds raised go towards a Somerville Mathematics Fund scholarship for an outstanding Somerville mathematics student.  Fundraiser Anmol Bhargo won a Newbury Comics gift card (donated by the Jay Landers) and also a $10 ice cream gift card (donated by J P Licks).  

Christina Bissereth, one of the competitors, was documenting the day for the Somerville High School newspaper and she shared her photos of the event.   Other pictures the volunteers took are posted here.

All competitors and volunteers went home with Scrapheap Showdown teeshirts donated by Gerald and Debra Bickoff of Commercial Cleaning Service.  

The other teams competing were "Team Cheng Mei," "Only Team with a Hope,"  "Team Nerrrdllz,"  "The X Factor,"  "The Trio,"  "K.R.E.,"  "The Incredibles,"  "Black Stallion," "SHS-Trio,"and "Honeybees."

Designers and refiners of the challenge were: Anne Button, Chase Duclos-Orsello, Zachary Faubion, Adam Foster, Monica Fernandes, Miriam Gates, Richard Graf, Jay Landers, Zbigniew Nitecki, Erica Voolich, Michael Voolich, and Susan Weiss.  Stanhope Framers donated the foam core and Rockler donated some of the magnets.  Michael Morgan and Dana Lee, teachers at Somerville High School, recruited student teams.  Sodexo at Suffolk University donated the food.  Amy Weiss designed the T-shirts.  

Sponsors of the event included Winter Hill Bank, RedBones BBQ, CliftonLarsonAllen LLP, Commercial Cleaning Service, Jay & Jasper, and our wonderful host, Tufts University.  Various members of the Board worked on all aspects of organizing the event and worked to make it a success along with community volunteers. 

The Somerville Mathematics Fund was chartered in 2000 to celebrate and encourage mathematics achievement in Somerville.  In January, they will be looking for teacher grant applications; and in April, they will be looking for scholarship applications.   For more information or to volunteer or to make a donation, call 617-666-0666, e-mail mathfund@gmail.com, or go to www.somervillemathematicsfund.org.

The link to this post is http://somervillemathematics.blogspot.com/2015/10/11th-annual-scrapheap-showdown-sort-it.html
© 2015, Erica Dakin Voolich

Scrapheap Showdown is Coming!

Scrapheap Showdown is Coming ... time to get your teams together.
The Somerville Math Fund's annual high school engineering challenge is coming on Sunday October 25th.
Teams of three will arrive to discover what will be their challenge to build this year.  If you're interested in seeing some of the previous years' projects, click here.

To compete you must be a high school student living in Somerville MA.  Go to this link to get all of the details.  Start organizing your team NOW, the registration is due on October 17.

In the past, the teams not only came up with creative names for their teams, but they also came up with interesting creative solutions to the annual challenges.  We always have great prizes.

Go forth and form your teams!

Outstanding Students win Somerville Math Fund Scholarships

The Somerville Mathematics Fund is pleased to announce the winners of their renewable mathematics scholarships for 2015.  The Math Fund was founded to celebrate and encourage math achievement and these students deserve to be celebrated for their work in math and science while in high school.

Erica Voolich and Jay Lander congratulate Elliot Rippe, Connie Chan, Jenni Matthews, Briana Lino and Emily Kate O’Brien on winning Somerville Math Fund renewable scholarships for outstanding work in math & science.

(photo by Arthur Ingalls, Geskus Photography)

Connie Chan will attend Bryn Mawr College,  Briana Lino will attend Wellesley College, Jenni Matthews will attend Tufts University, Emily Kate O’Brien will attend Bryn Mawr College, and Elliot Rippe will attend College of the Holy Cross.  Their scholarships of $1000 are renewable for up to a total of four years as long as they maintain a B average and take mathematics or courses which use mathematics.

Two of the scholarships are given in memory of two outstanding women, Connie Chan won the Alice T Schafer scholarship and Elliot Rippe won the Lt. Catherine M Landers scholarship.

Erica Voolich congratulates Connie Chan on winning the

Dr. Alice T Schafer Scholarship from the Somerville Math fund

(photo by Arthur Ingalls, Geskus Photography)

Connie Chan won the Alice T Schafer Scholarship.  She is planning to study biomedical engineering at Bryn Mawr.  Dr. Schafer (1915 - 1909) was orphaned as an infant and raised by two aunts.  When she went to college at the University of Richmond of Virginia, women students weren’t allowed in the library and she was discouraged from majoring in mathematics.  She won prizes, earned a PhD, taught at colleges (including Wellesley) and among the things she is known for is helping start the Association for Women in Mathematics (1971).  Less known about Dr. Schafer was her helping to start the Somerville Mathematics Fund in 2000 -- attending all of the planning meetings and contributing to their work as long as she was able.  She is remembered for her passion and work to insure mathematical opportunities for women.  Since Dr. Schafer was committed to the education and supporting women in mathematics, Connie study of biomedical engineering is a wonderful way to honor Dr. Schafer's memory.

Jay Landers congratulates Elliot Rippe on winning the

Lt. Catherine M Landers Scholarship from the Somerville Math Fund

(photo by Arthur Ingalls, Geskus Photography)

Elliot Rippe won the Lt. Catherine M Landers Scholarship.  He is planning on majoring in engineering and applied mathematics at Holy Cross.  When Lt. Landers (1920 - 2012) wanted to go to nursing school (graduating in 1942), her grandmother opened a cedar chest were she had been saving dollar bills to help pay for her granddaughter’s education.  Lt Landers won a Bronze Star for her service during WW2, where she ran a field hospital outside Paris; she was about to be shipped to the far East when WW2 ended and so she boarded a transport ship for the USA instead.   Jay Landers and Jasper Lawson donated a scholarship in her memory, honoring her commitment to education.  Elliot's interested in applied math and engineering is a wonderful way to honor Lt. Landers' commitment to education.

The Somerville Mathematics Fund, is affiliated with the national scholarship organization Dollars for Scholars, was chartered in 2000 to celebrate and encourage achievement in mathematics in the city of Somerville, Massachusetts. It May 2011, it was recognized as the outstanding Dollars for Scholars Chapter in New England.  Since it's founding, it has awarded $240,000 in mathematics scholarships to outstanding Somerville students.  Next fall, The Somerville Mathematics Fund will be seeking applications from teachers who teach in the city of Somerville who would like funding for classroom mathematics activities.  In October, the Math Fund will also be seeking high school students to compete in the annual Scrapheap Showdown.  For more  information, to volunteer, or to make a tax-deductible contribution, please contact Erica Voolich (617-666-0666 or mathfund@gmail.com) or go to www.somervillemathematicsfund.org.

©2015, Erica Dakin Voolich
The link to this page is http://somervillemathematics.blogspot.com/2015/06/outstanding-students-win-somerville.html

Pizza, then Pi and finally Pies — What More Can You Want on Ultimate Pi Day?

Drawing a nephroid with straight lines

Saturday, March 14 was Pi Day (3.14) -- but not just any π Day, it was Ultimate π Day because it is 2015:  3.14.15!  What better excuse is there to have a celebration of math with middle schoolers than π?     Well over 200 students, parents, teachers, and volunteers  from the high school, PTA and community, celebrated π  at the Healey School by eating pizza for dinner, then spending an evening estimating, creating, collecting data, answering questions, and ending with pies for everyone.

Graphing Diameter vs Circumference

After enjoying pizza donated by the Bickoff family (discounted by White Sport), the students from Healey, who were joined by students from East Somerville Community School (ESCS), and Argenziano schools went around to a wide variety of math activities set up in the gym and cafeteria.

Drawing circles using tangents.

These activities included: bicycle wheel roll, guessing contest, tooth pick drop (Buffon Needle problem), drawing a circle the size of a CD, mystery boxes, π button design, π facts quiz, birthday in π, circle in square vs square in circle, drawing cardioid or nephroid, drawing concentric circles by folding, drawing circles by tangents, drawing circle by right angles, predicting how high of a pour, predicting circumferences and radii, and graphing circumference vs diameter.

Pitching pennies to determine a better target:
a circle in a square or a square in a circle.

The event was planned by Wil Jacques (Healey), Scott Weaver (ESCS), and Erica Voolich (Somerville Mathematics Fund).  Table Talk Pies of Worcester generously supplied small pies for all who came that night and large pies for winners of events.  Table Talk has generously supported this Somerville Math Fund event for twelve years.  Star Market/Shaws (Beacon Street) generously donated most of the juice.

Drawing a cardioid using straight lines.

When planning the first SMF π Night in 2003, the Math Fund called the Table Talk Pi Company and explained what π day was and Table Talk generously donated large pies for prizes and small pies for everyone.  Eleven years later, Table Talk Pies is not only still donating to the the Somerville Pi night celebration, but to many more celebrations.   In fact, this year Table Talk donated more than 43,000 pies to schools celebrating pi day.

Taking a π facts quiz.

A big thank you to all the volunteers and donors who made this fun, educational evening possible.  It takes a community to celebrate π day!

Estimating circumference in mm by feel.

The Somerville Mathematics Fund, was founded in 2000 with the mission to celebrate and encourage mathematics achievement in Somerville MA.  In April they will be looking for applications for college mathematics scholarships.  For more information or to make a donation or to volunteer, www.somervillemathematicsfund.org or mathfund@gmail.com or call 617-666-0666.

The link to the page is http://somervillemathematics.blogspot.com/2015/03/pizza-then-pi-and-finally-pies-what.html
©2015, Erica Dakin Voolich