Have a Great Idea on How to Teach Math? These Teachers Do!

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 with grants of up to  $500.

The Morris S & Florence H Bender Foundation,  Jasper and Jay, Mr & Mrs Donald McGoldrick,  Julie Schneider, and the Winter Hill Bank, each sponsored a teachers’ grants.  The rest of the grants were funded thanks to the combined generosity of everyone who contributed to the Math Fund’s annual fundraiser.  The following teachers won grants to encourage and support mathematics achievement in the classrooms of Somerville.

The following teachers won grants to encourage and support mathematics achievement in the classrooms of Somerville.

 The Math Fund wants to thank the Morris S & Florence Bender Foundation for generously underwriting the following teacher grants:

• Tahlia Brazdaluz, Argenziano School (K), Math Manipulatives and Tools

• Jayne Campos, Argenziano School (1st), Magnetic 10 Frame, Easel White Board Compatible

• Kayla Coleman, Argenziano School (1st), 10 Frames & 10 Frames Dry Erase Boards

• Samantha Ford, Argenziano School (3rd), Posters, Charts & Organizing Materials

• Diana Garity, Argenziano School (2nd SEI Newcomers), Grid & Plain Easel Pads and Dry Erase Sheets

• Rachel Graubart, Argenziano School (1st Shelter English Immersion), Family Math Night Introducing Math Games

• Molly Harrington, Argenziano School (2nd SEI Inclusion), Half-moon Table

• Alyssa Mackey, Argenziano, Brown and Kennedy Schools (K-8 Math Coach), Math Manipulatives & Materials

• Erin McGovern, Argengiano School (3rd), Chart Materials, Magnetic Manipulatives, & Storage

• Gianna Melone, Argenziano School (2nd), Kidney Shaped Table

• Michele Moreno, Argenziano School (4th), Wipeboard Materials and Math Manipulatives

• Halley Snelling, Argenziano School (2nd), Carpet Blocks & Easel Pads

• Ava Strezynski, Argenziano School (K), Math Manipulatives

• Diana Young, Argenziano School (1st), Family Math Games Night

• Christina Carroll, Brown School (K), Magnetic 10 Frames, Laminating & Protection Materials

• Johanna Cooney, Brown School (1st), Pinkcat Games, Materials & Supplies

• Francine Davis, Brown School (5th Math & Science), Math Games & Manipulatives

• Stephanie Vassillion, Brown School (K), Organizational Materials

• Julie Jones & Lauren McGlashing, Capuano School (K), Family Math Night

• Katie Dickson, Kennedy School (Life Skills), Touchmath

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

Jasper & Jay: 

• Jessica Greenberg, East Somerville Community School (2nd), Wipebooks & Math Supplies

Mr. & Mrs. Donald McGoldrick:

• Eleanore MacLean, Winter Hill Community Innovation School (3rd), Math Manipulatives & Supplies

Julie Schneider:

• Julie Scafidi, Winter Hill Community Innovation School (7th & 8th Math), iRespond Lite Clickers

• Priya Thelapurath, Winter Hill Community Innovation School (Newcomer Academy Math Teacher 6th-8th), Math Manipulatives

The Winter Hill Bank:

• Tzu-Ting Han, Winter Hill Community Innovation School (1st), Math Games & Supplies

These Teacher Grants were funded by the many generous donors who together contributed enough in our annual  fundraiser to support all of them.  There is power in donations of many sizes coming together to support the larger whole.

• Heidi Given, District Wide Interventionist, Math Manipulatives

• Karen Kolman, District Math Interventionist, Materials for Integrow Numeracy Solutions

• Catherine Oldshue, Healey School (4th), White Boards and Manipulatives

• Katie Starbuck, Healey School (Math Coach), Building Thinking Classrooms Healey Teacher Professional Development

• Kayla Burgess, West Somerville Neighborhood School (6th Math & Science), Graph White Boards and Math Games

• Erin McDonald, West Somerville Neighborhood School (2nd), WipeBooks & Materials

• Dylan Sylvester, West Somerville Neighborhood School (7th & 8th Math), Calculators & Sticky Chart Paper

• Brenda Williams, West Somerville Neighborhood School (K), Math Manipulatives & Materials

• Kristin Day, Winter Hill Community Innovation School, (5th Math & Science), Charts, White Boards & Game Materials

• Swetha Kaluri, Winter Hill Community Innovation School (Math Interventionist), Materials for Integrow Numeracy Solutions

• Andrea Palmer, Winter Hill Community Innovation School (K-8 Math Coach), Math Manipulatives

The Somerville Mathematics Fund, was chartered in 2000 to celebrate and encourage achievement in mathematics in the city of Somerville, Massachusetts.  Over twenty-five years (a quarter century!), the Somerville Math Fund has awarded $176,065 in teacher grants supporting four hundred forty-two teachers’ projects in the city of Somerville along with emergency grants to East Somerville teachers after the devastating school fire.

In late March, the fund will be seeking applications from students who reside in Somerville for college mathematics scholarships.  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 page is: https://somervillemathematics.blogspot.com/2026/01/have-great-idea-on-how-to-teach-math.html

Time to get your Teacher Grant applications together!

 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 Math Fund website and is due by January 7, 2024.

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 some previous year’s grant winners on the Somerville Math Fund blog or by requesting a copy of this year’s annual newsletter which was 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 twenty years, the math fund has awarded  $147,170  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 teacher grant application is available on
https://somervillemathematicsfund.org/teacher-grants/

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 blog post is https://somervillemathematics.blogspot.com/2023/11/time-to-get-your-teacher-grant.html

Marble Mayhem Video is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNRinWp4PrQ

 Here is the video for this year's Scrapheap Showdown, Marble Mayhem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNRinWp4PrQ

Scrapheap Showdown: Marble Mayhem!

By Erica Dakin Voolich

On October 22, 18 high school students on six teams gathered in the Gantcher Gym at Tufts University to compete in the Somerville Math Fund’s 17th annual Scrapheap Showdown, Marble Mayhem.

Their challenge was to create a Rube-Goldberg device for marbles making creative use of triggers, jumps, loops, or elevators.  The “field” was two side by side tables held two feet apart.  One marble started its journey by being placed above one table at one corner and ended by stopping on the other table at the opposite corner.  Points were awarded according to how long the marble took to traverse the maze, how many obstacles and tricks it maneuvered through along the way, and consistency of time from start to finish.  Participants had up to five different sized marbles they could choose to use in their maze.

This year when the students arrived, the usual scrapheap pile included long pieces of foam core and wooden dowels along with the miscellaneous interesting “junk” that the Somerville Math Fund pile usually includes.  

The contestants were very busy, planning and trying different ideas, making adjustments while testing with their marbles.  One team succeeded in jumping and catching their marble from table to table.

Another team built what looked like pin ball machine, triggering multiple marbles.

A couple of teams had paths with zig-zagging paths downhill. 

 It was fun to watch each of the marble structures being tested everyone hoping their marbles would do what they planned for them to do and to do it in a timely manner.  Time was called after 3 hours. It was time for testing the different structures.  

The first place team was “Super Seniors” (Yasmin Nazhar, Atticus Borggaard, and Ellery Borggaard) with a score of 1095 points.  

Second place was “Slurm Gang” (Miles Eisenbraun, Alexander Moulton, and Robert Leoni)) with 1030 points.  

Third place was “Tech Titans” (Ali El-Saudi, Christopher Montiel, and Julian Barney) with 180 points. 

Fourth place was “Calculus Crusaders” (Liam Beretsky-Jewell and Darragh Keane) with 130 points.

The teams chose their prizes in the order they finished.  The prizes donated were three sets of two tickets to the RedSox (donated by Sam Voolich) for a game in April 2024, three $100 Target gift cards (donated by Chase Duclos-Orsello),  and 3 gift cards from Anna’s Taqueria (donated by long term Somerville Math Fund supporters).

The other participating teams were the “The Rats AAAAHHRRERRHHHH”  (Serena Wong, Rafael Ronen, and Bhavroop Kaur), and “The LEDS”  (Lily Thompson, Elias Colley, and Dash Brenner).

Designers and refiners of the challenge were members of the Somerville Math Fund Board: Fred Bernardin, Sanford Bogage, Adam Foster, Richard Graf, Dan Oshima, Jesse Stern, Erica Voolich, Susan Weiss.  Amy Weiss designed the teeshirt and Monica Fernandes designed the sponsor flyer; and Susan and Sanford designed the student recruiting and registration materials, and Sanford managed registration and the Google Classroom for this event.

Michael Morgan and Patricia Murphy-Sheehy (Head of Math Department) at Somerville High helped with suggestions and distribution help of registration materials.  The math teachers at Somerville High School, recruited student teams.  Bill Trudell videoed the event for Somerville Cable EdTV Channel 15.

Again Tufts University was our wonderful host donating their gym space for a Sunday event.  Last year was our first year back after a three year COVID hiatus. This was our 17th Scrapheap Showdown and Tufts has been our host for all of these events.  

Thanks to our generous sponsors, this activity was both a fund raiser for a scholarship and three teacher grants, provided prizes for the students and allowed the students to participate without paying any registration fee.  We offered different levels of sponsorship for the event.  Thanks to all of our wonderful donors whose donations will make one scholarship available next spring and four teacher grants in January.

Gold Level (one year of a college scholarship each):

Commercial Cleaning Co./Bickoff Family, Jasper J. Lawson, PhD. & Associates, Julie Schneider, and Tufts University.

Silver Level (one teacher grant each):

East Cambridge Savings Bank, Mr. & Mrs. Donald F. McGoldrick, Winter Hill Bank and a long term sponsor.

Bronze Level (supporting Somerville Math Fund work):Chase Duclos-Orsello, A Member of the Somerville High School Faculty, Zbigniew Niticki, and Sam Voolich.

The Somerville Mathematics Fund was chartered in 2000 to celebrate and encourage mathematics achievement in Somerville.  On January 7th, we will be looking for teacher grant applications; and in April, we 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 page is https://somervillemathematics.blogspot.com/2023/10/scrapheap-showdown-marble-mayhem.html

©Erica Dakin Voolich 2023

Scrapheap is Coming -- Time to Sign Up!

  

Scrapheap Showdown is Coming ... time to get your teams together.  Get two more friends and register your team.  Choose a crazy name for the team and then all come on October 22nd to Tufts U Gantcher Center.

After two years off for the Pandemic, Scrapheap Showdown came back last year.  Here is the video of last year's Scrapheap Showdown, Good Vibrations.

The Somerville Math Fund's annual high school engineering challenge is coming on Sunday October 23rd.  It will be held at the Gantcher Center at Tufts University.  Sign-in is at noon.  

But you must register before online here before October 6th.

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.

To compete you must be a high school student living in Somerville MA. Click here to register online.  Somerville high school students are encouraged to register and participate.

Start organizing your team NOW, the registration is due on October 6th.

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 of three!

Scrapheap Showdown is Coming ... time to get your teams together.  Get two more friends and register your team.  Choose a crazy name for the team and then all come on October 23rd to Tufts U Gantcher Center.

Good Luck!

The link to this post ishttps://somervillemathematics.blogspot.com/2023/09/scrapheap-is-coming-time-to-sign-up.html

Math Meet, Pi, Pizza, and finally Pies —A Great Renewed way to Celebrate a Transcendental Number

 by Erica Voolich

Tuesday, March 14 is Pi Day (3.14).  What better excuse is there to have a celebration of math with middle schoolers than π?     On the Eve of Pi Day, over 100 students, teachers, and high school Math Club members celebrated π  at Somerville High School by eating pizza while spending an afternoon taking a math contest and then estimating, creating, answering questions, and ending with Table Talk pies for everyone. 

The Somerville High School Math Club led by Michael Morgan organized the event.  Instead of the usual math contest between Somerville’s middle schools’ math teams for the month of March, they invited the schools to come and have students take a math contest related to pi and circles written by the high schoolers and do some of the pi night activities the Somerville Math Fund has organized in the past pre-pandemic.  

While enjoying pizza donated by the Bickoff family of the Commercial Cleaning Service, the students from the students from the Healey School, the East Somerville Community School,  the West Somerville Neighborhood school and the Kennedy School went around to a variety of pi math activities set up in the Lower Cafeteria at the High School.  

These activities included: predicting bicycle wheel roll distance after two revolutions, a guessing contest, π button design, π facts quiz, finding your birthday in π, drawing a cardioid or nephroid (curves from lines), and predicting circumferences in mm by feel of objects in mystery boxes.

Even though the Somerville Math Fund sponsored math night event was canceled by the pandemic for the last three years, there were Somerville High School Math Club members who commented about remembering doing some of these events when they went over to either the Healey (2019) or the East Somerville (2018) for the Pi Family math night.

Scott Weaver (East), Wil Jacques (Healey) brought students and helped Erica Voolich (Somerville Mathematics Fund) organize the activities for the event.  Also bringing students were Annalyica Beck-Liston from East, Alyssa Mackey from West, and Veronica Santana from Kennedy.

In addition, Scott Weaver at the East Somerville Community School organized a day of math/pi activities in all of his classes on Pi Day. All of his students enjoyed Table Talk Pies to fuel their exploration of Pi and circles.  Somerville had a rainy nor’easter for pi day while the rest of New England was buried in a spring snow (in some places measured in feet) and probably had to postpone their celebrations with the thousands of pies supplied by Table Talk

Table Talk Pies of Worcester generously supplied small pies for all who came that afternoon.  Table Talk has generously supported this Somerville Math Fund event for nineteen years (2 years off for Covid). 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.  Twenty-one years later, Table Talk Pies is not only still donating to the Somerville Pi night celebration, but also to many more celebrations.   This year Table Talk donated about 68,000 pies to schools and organizations celebrating pi day.

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

The Somerville Mathematics Fund, was founded in 2000 with the mission to celebrate and encourage mathematics achievement in Somerville, MA.  They also award renewable college mathematics scholarships; applications will be due in early April.  For more information, to make a donation, or to volunteer, visit www.somervillemathematicsfund.org or mathfund@gmail.com or call 617-666-0666.

The Link to this page is https://somervillemathematics.blogspot.com/2023/03/math-meet-pi-pizza-and-finally-pies.html

Have a Great Idea on How to Teach Math? These Teachers Do!

 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 with grants up to $500.  

William Kuhlman, James Dean Foundation, Mr & Mrs Donald McGoldrick each sponsored multiple grants. The East Cambridge Savings Bank, Jeremy Gale, Lali & Jay Haines, Jay & Jasper, William Kuhlman, Philip Parsons, Spring Hill Dental, Tufts University, Winter Hill Bank and Rebecca Wood-Spagnoli each sponsored a teacher's grant.  The rest of the grants were funded thanks to the combined generosity of everyone who contributed to the Math Fund’s annual fundraiser.  The following teachers won grants to encourage and support mathematics achievement in the classrooms of Somerville.

These Teacher Grants were funded by the many generous donors who together contributed enough in our annual  fundraiser to support all of them.  There is power in donations of many sizes coming together to support the larger whole.  Thank you to our annual donors.

• Matthew Burch, Argenziano School (Math Instructional Coach K-8), Math instructional materials.

• Amanda Oppman, Healey School (Community Schools Site Coordinator After-School), Math Plus After-School Club 3rd-6th.

• Paula O’Sullivan, Swetha Kalluri & Jenna DiNovis, District-wide Math Interventionists, (K-8), Math Manipulatives.

• Katie Starbuck, Healey School and East Somerville Community School (Math Coach), Materials to Support Math Classes.

The Math Fund wants to thank the James Dean Foundation for generously underwriting the following teacher grants:

• Nicole Alimena, Healey School (5th, SEI-1), Math Station Manipulatives.

• Sabrina Boy-Arruda, Healey School (5th Math), Create Math Stations.

• Andrea Carcamo, Healey School (Dual Language Pre-K), Math Manipulatives.

• Susanne Douglas, Healey School (K), Math Activity Centers.

• Julie Gallardo, Healey School (4th SEI-1), Math Workshop and Intervention Materials.

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

East Cambridge Savings Bank:

• Dolores Theolien, Healey School (1st), Take Home Math Materials.

Jeremy Gale:

• Johanna Cooney, Brown School (1st), STEM bin materials.

Lali and Jay Haines:

• Michael Morgan, Somerville High School (AP Statistics), Numworks Calculators.

Jay and Jasper:

• Meredith Rothstein, Winter Hill Community Innovation School (3rd-5th, Autism), Math Manipulatives.

William Kuhlman:

• Jessica Anaya, East Somerville Community School (K), Math Manipulatives.

• Naina Sood Fox, East Somerville Community School (5th Math & Science), Fraction & Decimal Manipulatives.

Mr & Mrs. Donald McGoldrick:

• Debra Dixon & Jacquelyn Berkowitz, Winter Hill Community Innovation School (Library and SMILE Pre-K), STEM Books.

• Molly Harrington, Argenziano School (2nd SEI Inclusion), Math Enrichment and Intervention Materials.

Philip Parsons:

• Mary-Kate Pereira, Argenziano School (K, SEI-1), Math Manipulatives.

Spring Hill Dental: 

• Roxane Scrima, Kennedy School (K), Math Games and Manipulatives.

Tufts University:

• Alyssa Mackey, West Somerville Neighborhood School (7th & 8th Math), Support for Differentiated Materials.

Winter Hill Bank:

• Andrea Palmer, Winter Hill Community Innovation School (K-8 Math Coach), Support Materials for K-8 Math and Multi-Lingual Teachers.

Rebecca Wood-Spagnoli:

• Julie Jones, Lauren McGlashing, Shayna Goggin, Molly Dickerson, Jessica DaSilva, & Mallory Crane, Capuano School (K), Kindergarten Math Day.

The Somerville Mathematics Fund was chartered in 2000 to celebrate and encourage achievement in mathematics in the city of Somerville, Massachusetts.  Over twenty-three years, the Somerville Math Fund has awarded $140,711 in teacher grants supporting three hundred seventy-two teachers’ projects in the city of Somerville along with emergency grants to East Somerville teachers after the devastating school fire.

On April 7th, the fund will be seeking applications from students who reside in Somerville for college mathematics scholarships.  Over twenty-three years, the Somerville Math Fund has awarded a total of $559,000 in four-year mathematics scholarships to one hundred eighteen students.  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 for this post is: https://somervillemathematics.blogspot.com/2023/02/have-great-idea-on-how-to-teach-math.html

Scrapheap Showdown: Good Vibrations! The Video

 On October 23, the 16th annual Scrapheap Showdown.  You can read about all the details on the blog post 

Scrapheap Showdown: Good Vibrations!

Now you can watch the video from Somerville EdTV, recorded by Bill Trudell and edited by Joe Constantine.  

https://youtu.be/jHNkMic1aiE

Scrapheap Showdown: Good Vibrations

 by Erica Dakin Voolich

On October 23, 21 high school students on seven teams gathered in the Gantcher Gym at Tufts University to compete in the Somerville Math Fund’s 16th annual Scrapheap Showdown.

Their challenge was to build an earthquake proof building on their 16” by 16” square foam base.  The buildings were judged on how much weight each could hold when placed on our earthquake-shaking-table.  

The scoring was based on how high up the weight was held without the building collapsing, the best of 3 weight trials.  The scoring was calculated with height squared times weight (measured in golf balls).  

This year when the students arrived, the usual scrapheap pile was smaller than in past years — the long structural pieces of foam core or wood were removed to add to the challenge.  

The buildings needed to be tall and so the students found their own way to use the materials to build strong tall structures.  The contestants were very busy, planning and trying different ideas and doing some testing on the shaker table.  

After two hours, it was time to test the skyscrapers on our shaker table designed by Adam and Richard! The final structures ranged from 57” to 97” tall and varied from holding no golf balls to ten when shaken for 30 seconds.  All structures survived at least 30 seconds on the shaker table, some held out longer than others.

The first place team was “Return of the Crimson Quackateers” (Leo Chiu, Addie Chiu, and Yuvraj Rattan) with a score of 37,210 points for their 61” tall building that held 10 golf balls.  

Second place was “Bob the Builder” (Bhavroop Kaur, Rafael Ronen, and Serena Wong) with 34,300 points.  

Third place was “Saint Bonkers” (Yasmin Nazhar, Atticus Borggaard, and Edgar Flores Ramos) with 28,227 points. 

Fourth place was “BBG News” (Cyrus Oakes, Christopher Montiel, and Julian Barnaby) with 28,227 points.

The teams chose their prizes in the order they finished.  The prizes donated were three sets of two tickets to the RedSox (donated by Sam Voolich) for a game in April 2023, three $100 Target gift cards (donated by Chase Duclos-Orsello), three RedBones $50 gift cards from RedBones BBQ and 3 gift cards from Anna’s Taqueria (donated by long term Somerville Math Fund supporters).

The other participating teams were the “No Name Team”  (Helena Easton, Ana Luna Maldonado Clougherty, and Evelyn Flores), 

the “Funny Name Team”  (Gerran Hullah,  Aneurin Hullah, and Miles Eisenbraum), 

and “Los Pollos Hermanos”  (Jonathan Chan, Veid Patel, and Sebastian Palomino   Jimenez)

Designers and refiners of the challenge were members of the Somerville Math Fund Board: Sanford Bogage, Chase Duclos-Orsello, Adam Foster, Richard Graf, Dan Oshima, Jesse Stern, Erica Voolich, Susan Weiss along with Fred Bernardin joined as a volunteer.  Amy Weiss designed the teeshirt and Monica Fernandes designed the sponsor flyer; and Susan and Sanford designed the student recruiting and registration materials, and Sanford managed registration and the Google Classroom for this event.

Michael Morgan and Patricia Murphy-Sheehy (Head of Math Department) at Somerville High helped with suggestions and distribution help of registration materials.  The math teachers at Somerville High School, recruited student teams.  Bill Trudell videoed the event for Somerville Cable EdTV Channel 15.

Again Tufts University was our wonderful host donating their gym space for a Sunday event.  It was so good to be back after a three year COVID hiatus. This was our 16th Scrapheap Showdown and Tufts has been our host for all of these events.  

Thanks to our generous sponsors, this activity was both a fund raiser for a scholarship and three teacher grants, provided prizes for the students and allowed the students to participate without paying any registration fee.  Like in the Game Jams, this year we offered different levels of sponsorship for the event.  Thanks to all of our wonderful donors whose donations will make at least one scholarship available next spring and three teacher grants in January.

Gold Level (one year of a college scholarship each):  Commercial Cleaning Co./Bickoff Family, Jasper J. Lawson, PhD. & Associates, Julie Schneider, and Winter Hill Bank.

Silver Level (one teacher grant each): East Cambridge Savings Bank, Mr. & Mrs. Donald F. McGoldrick, and a long term sponsor.

Bronze Level (supporting Somerville Math Fund work): Chase Duclos-Orsello, Midé Technology Corporation, A Member of the Somerville High School Faculty, and RedBones BBQ

The Somerville Mathematics Fund was chartered in 2000 to celebrate and encourage mathematics achievement in Somerville.  On January 7th, we will be looking for teacher grant applications; and in April, we 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.

© Erica Dakin Voolich,  2022

The link to this page is:  https://somervillemathematics.blogspot.com/2022/10/scrapheap-showdown-good-vibrations.html

Time for Teachers to Apply for Somerville Math Fund Grants!

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 7, 2022.

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 some previous year’s grant winners on the Somerville Math Fund blog or by requesting a copy of this year’s annual newsletter which will be mailed in late November.

The Somerville Mathematics Fund, was chartered in 2000 to celebrate and encourage achievement in mathematics in the city of Somerville, Massachusetts.  Over twenty years, the math fund has awarded  $133,418 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 teacher grant application is available on
http://www.somervillemathematicsfund.org/teachergrant.html.

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 blog post is https://somervillemathematics.blogspot.com/2021/11/time-for-teachers-to-apply-for.html

Game Jam Winners and Supporters!

 by Erica Dakin Voolich

Previous years in October I’d be telling you about teams each of three students arriving at the gym at Tufts University for an engineering challenge on a Sunday afternoon.  Well, guess what happened twice with Scrapheap during the pandemic?  No such event was possible again in 2021. Tufts reopened for their students in this fall, but not for outside groups of kids under the age of 18.

Last year the Somerville Math Fund’s Board would not be deterred, they decided they would hold a Game Jam instead in December, with students each working in teams of three each from their own home.  No Scrapheap again this year?  No problem!  Time for Game Jam #2.

This time teams could get together in their own homes, if they wanted, or work apart. This time it was held in October and November.

Five teams signed up for the Somerville Math Fund Game Jam #2.  They got “their marching orders” in a zoom meeting on Tuesday night and then on Wednesday afternoon picked they each up their supplies in a pizza box at the high school from Mr. Morgan.  Students had from Tuesday night at 6:30 PM until Friday the next week at midnight to work on and upload their games.  

They needed to design a board or card game that could be played by 3 or more players, assuming each the players could possibly be at different locations or at the same place.  The theme of the game was Time — any interpretation of that theme or spelling was OK.  They needed to explain in their notes the connection to math in their games.

All the teams were creating at home, not together in person in the Tufts U gym — not like the pre-COVID days of Scrapheap Showdown, with a large pile of junk, our scrapheap in the middle of a Tufts U gym floor.  Each player was given a pizza box full of papers with different board designs, our contest rules, many different sided dice, playing cards and some random unrelated items that they needed to figure out how to use at least one of them in the game.  

These were used in interesting ways.  In one game while racing against a timer the number of cards you choose determines the number of dice rolled in your turn.  In another game, you and Amelia Earhart are trying to escape from the  Bermuda Triangle.  In game based on a roll of a die, you might be traveling by car, plane or boat using a glider or elastic man. And in another you will be auctioning off pieces of land  The Board was impressed by the creativity of the games the students came up with.  Lots of detail and thought went in to the rules and design.  Creative choice of how to use the required theme of “time.” 

After the games were submitted and uploaded to the Somerville Math Fund Classroom, the Board members needed to play the games and the teams of contestants were each given the other games to play and evaluate with the same rubric the Board was using.  The rubric was on a scale of 16 (up to 4 points in each of 4 categories) and each game was judged by students as well as Board members and the final score was the average of the students’ scores with the average of the Board members’ scores.

The first place team was “Marci” (Marcus Odilon, Sam Turin) with their game “Go for Another,” 12.1666… points.  Second place was “Shameless Dust Particle” (Atticus Borggaard), with his game “Thyme Garden,” 12.05 points.  Third place was “Don’t be Trashy” (Rio Hunter Black, Marie Isra Khan, Marie Lessard-Brandt)  with their game “Escaping Hartbreak,” 11.4333… points. Forth place was “Bored Gamers” (Samuel Diener, Nikhilesh Rattan, Caden Yarberry) with their game “Jet Lag,” 11.0333… points.  The difference between first and 4th place was 1.1333… points — this was a really close event!  Good job all around.

The teams chose their prizes in the order they finished.  The prizes donated were three sets of 2 tickets to the RedSox from Sam Voolich for a game in April 2022, two $50 Target gift cards from Jay and Jasper, and four RedBones $50 gift cards from RedBones BBQ.

Designers and refiners of the challenge were members of the Somerville Math Fund Board: Sanford Bogage, Chase Duclos-Orsello, Adam Foster, Monica Fernandes, Richard Graf, Jay Landers, Erica Voolich, Susan Weiss with design suggestions and distribution help from Michael Morgan and Patricia Murphy-Sheehy (Head of Math Department) at Somerville High.  The math teachers at Somerville High School, recruited student teams.  

Thanks to our sponsors, this activity was both a fund raiser for scholarships, provided prizes for the students and allowed the students to participate without paying any registration fee.  This year we offered different levels of sponsorship for the event.  Thanks to all of our wonderful donors whose donations will make at least one scholarship available next spring and two teacher grants in January.

Gold Level (one year of college scholarship each):  Commercial Cleaning Co./Bickoff Family, East Cambridge Savings Bank, Julie Schneider, Tufts University and Winter Hill Ban.

Silver Level (one teacher grant each):  Jasper J. Lawson, PhD. and Associates and Mr. & Mrs. Donald F. McGoldrick

Bronze Level (supporting Somerville Math Fund work):  Midé Technology Corporation, RedBones BBQ, J.J. Sullivan Plumbing & Heating Co. Inc. and one anonymous donor.

The Somerville Mathematics Fund was chartered in 2000 to celebrate and encourage mathematics achievement in Somerville.  On January 7th, we will be looking for teacher grant applications; and in April, we 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 page is: https://somervillemathematics.blogspot.com/2021/11/game-jam-winners-and-supporters.html

2nd Annual Game Jam, time to get teams together!

 The Somerville Mathematics Fund presents

our 2nd Virtual Game Jam!

Due to the pandemic, we’ve created a virtual challenge in

lieu of our annual Scrapheap Showdown event.

Compete in teams of three on a different kind of

challenge, one where you design a game that will

be played and judged in part by the other teams.

Winners will receive exciting prizes!

● Create your game October 19th to 29th.

● Play and rate other entries November 1st to 5th.

● Winner announced November 7th

Register individually or as a team by October 13th

visit:

https://forms.gle/Y2agwREQ56Cb1MgV6

Scrapheap Move Over, here comes Game Jam!

 by Erica Dakin Voolich

Previous years in October I’d be telling you about teams each of three students arriving at the gym at Tufts University for an engineering challenge on a Sunday afternoon.  Well, guess what happened with Scrapheap in the pandemic?  No such event was possible.  But, the Somerville Math Fund’s Board would not be deterred, they decided they would hold a Game Jam instead in December, with students each working in teams of three each from their own home.

Seven teams signed up for the Somerville Math Fund Game Jam.  They got “their marching orders” in a zoom meeting on Tuesday night and then on Wednesday afternoon picked up their supplies in a pizza box at the high school.  

Students had from Tuesday night at 6:30 PM until Sunday at 6:30 PM to work on and upload their games.  They needed to design a board or card game that could be played by 3 or more players, assuming each the players could possibly at different locations.  The theme of the game was Space — any interpretation of that theme was OK.  All the teams of three were creating at home, not together in person — not like the pre-COVID days of Scrapheap Showdown, with a large pile of junk, our scrapheap in the middle of a Tufts U gym floor.  Each player was given a pizza box full of papers with different board designs, rules, many different sided dice, playing cards and some random unrelated items that they needed to figure out how to use at least one of them in the game.  These were used in interesting ways.  In one game the stress ball became the sun on the game board of the planets, in another there was an animal building challenge with another random object as the board game progressed. 

The Board was impressed by the creativity of the games the students came up with.  Lots of detail and thought went in to the rules and design.  Creative choice of how to use the required theme of “space.” Some planetary or astroid travel or building for survival or defense, some different non-Euclidean geometric spaces, even some aliens to escape.  Some games were for younger students some assumed high school math.

After the games were submitted and uploaded to the Somerville Math Fund Classroom, the Board members needed to play the games and the teams of contestants were each given two games to play and evaluate with the same rubric the Board was using.  The rubric was on a scale of 16 (up to 4 points in each of 4 categories) and each game was judged by students as well as Board members and the final score was the average of the students’ scores with the average of the Board members’ scores.

The first place team was “No Name Given” (Marie Lessard-Brandt, Isra Khan, Rio Hunter Black) with their game “Belt Hop,” 13.2 points.  The second place team was “Senioritis” (Justin Millette, Henry Ayanna, Owen Chiu) with their game “Cosmic Civilization,” 13 points.

The third place team was “Buddies” ( Brayden Goldstein-Gelb, AJ Feldman, Kevin Wen), with their game “Hold Your Horses,” 12.3 points.  The fourth place team was “We Don’t Know” (Nikhilesh Rattan, Samuel Diener, Chakshu Patel), with their game of  “The Final Space Race,” 11.8 points.

The teams chose their prizes in the order they finished.  The prizes donated were three passes donated by the New England Aquarium good through 2021, three $100 Target gift card, three $25 Apple gift cards and three $25  Amazon gift cards.

Designers and refiners of the challenge were members of the Somerville Math Fund Board: Sanford Bogage, Chase Duclos-Orsello, Adam Foster, Monica Fernandes, Richard Graf, Jay Landers, Kelly O’Connell, Erica Voolich, Susan Weiss with design suggestions and distribution help from Patricia Murphy-Sheehy at Somerville High, Head of Math Department.  The math teachers at Somerville High School, recruited student teams.  

Thanks to our sponsors, this activity was both a fund raiser for scholarships, provided prizes for the students and allowed the students to participate without paying any registration fee.  Our wonderful sponsors were Commercial Cleaning Co/Bickoff Family, Jasper J. Lawson, PhD. and Associates, Midé Technology Corporation, Tufts University, Winter Hill Bank, and two anonymous donors.

The Somerville Mathematics Fund was chartered in 2000 to celebrate and encourage mathematics achievement in Somerville.  On January 7th, we will be looking for teacher grant applications; and in April, we 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 page is https://somervillemathematics.blogspot.com/2021/01/scrapheap-move-over-here-comes-game-jam.html

Scrapheap Showdown Morphs into a Game Jam for Somerville Kids

 The Somerville Mathematics Fund

Scrapheap Showdown has gone virtual!

We are hosting a game jam!

We've created a new, virtual challenge for our

annual Scrapheap Showdown event.

Compete in teams of three on a different kind of

challenge, one where you design a game that will

be played and judge in part by the other teams.

Open to residents of Somerville who have not graduated from high school

VIRTUAL EVENT DATE:  Make your game between December 8-13th, 2020

Winner announce by December 20

Register individually or as a team by December 2nd

scan 

or go to https://forms.gle/Y2agwREQ56Cb1MgV6

Scrapheap Showdown 2019: Ship to Shore!

On October 27, 18 high school students on six teams gathered in “The Cage” in Cousens Gym at Tufts University to compete in the Somerville Mathematics Fund’s 15th annual Scrapheap Showdown.  Along with the usual interesting “junk” in the center of the room when the students walked in, there were also piles of foam core and paper.  The students were given their challenge: to design and build a crane on a base of MDF board. The teams worked intensely, designing, building, testing, reinforcing, and adjusting their cranes.

Time was called after 3 3/4 hours.  Now was the time for the two competitions. The first challenge was a precision test to retrieve objects from the “ship” on the floor and place these to various places on the tables (different locations were worth different points).

They had 3 minutes for this first challenge.  The second challenge was unloading bulk cargo: a strength and speed test.  They had to upload various objects (weights, marbles, coins) and the total was weighed after 2 minutes.

They had to be careful to not overload their bucket and break the crane arm.  The team that was able to raise the most, Euleroids, lifted a total of 16 pounds, 2 ounces.

Teams were ranked in each event, one thru six, with 1 getting 1 point, etc.  So the winning team had the lowest final score.

The team with the lowest overall score, was “Euleroids” (Charlie Nadeau, Iskandar Nazhar, Myles Rivera).

The second place team was the “Crimson Quackateers” (Nora Chiu, Owen Chiu, Caden Yarberry).

The third place team was "√-1 2^3  ∑ π " (i eight sum pi) (Laura Clervil, Harmanpreet Kaur, Nasreen Kaur).

The fourth place team was "i i on the π π" (i’s on the pi’s) (Brian Jian Chan, Luca Duclos-Orsello, Timothy Labounko).

The other teams were "Generic Name" (Omar Benkhayat, Alexa English, Jadrianis Vega)

and "Don't Be Trash" (Rio Hunter Black, Isra Khan, Marie Lessard-Brandt).

The teams could choose their prize in the order they finished.    The prizes donated were:  three $100 Target gift cards (donated by Anne Button), three $100 amazon gift cards (donated by Jay & Jasper) four 2019 Red Sox tickets (donated by Sam Voolich), four $50 RedBones BBQ gift cards, one $50 gift card for FlatBread and Sacco Bowl and $60 cash.  All competitors and volunteers went home with Scrapheap Showdown teeshirts donated by Gerald and Debra Bickoff of Commercial Cleaning Service.

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.

Designers & refiners of the challenge were: Sanford Bogage, Anne Button, Chase Duclos-Orsello,  Zachary Faubion, Adam Foster, Monica Fernandes, Richard Graf, Jay Landers, Zbigniew Nitecki, Erica Voolich.

Stanhope Framers donated the foam core; Magnificent Muffin & Bagel donated egg crates and Patricia Murphy-Sheehy, with the math teachers at Somerville High School, recruited student teams.  Amy Weiss designed the T-shirts and edited the poster advertising the event at the high school.

Sponsors of the event included Winter Hill Bank, RedBones BBQ, Commercial Cleaning Service, Jack Connolly of Wedgwood-Crane & Connolly, Mide Corporation, Rudy’s Restaurant, Jay & Jasper, Anne Button, anonymous, and our most wonderful host, Tufts University.

Suffolk University Catering provided the refreshments for the teams and volunteers.  Various members of the Board worked on all aspects of organizing the event and worked to make it a success along with community volunteer Scott Carlson.

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.

If these pictures aren't enough, here are some general pictures to enjoy.

©Somerville Math Fund 2019
The link to this post is https://somervillemathematics.blogspot.com/2019/10/scrapheap-showdown-2019-ship-to-shore.html