After School Math Club for Girls
I am interested in starting an afterschool math club just for 4th-5th-6th grade girls, as a parent volunteer at my kids' elementary school. I'd base it on the Math Olympiad framework, or maybe Mathletes. Any other local schools doing something similar? Tips, advice, favorite curriculum sources? Note I am not an educator, and would need to convince an upper-grade teacher to "sponsor" it too, and bring in some professional resources. Thanks!
May 23, 2017
Parent Replies
You do realize you are asking a teacher to do curriculum work without pay?
Maybe you could get the PTA to fund the time.
I did a math fair at my daughter's school for a number of years (I teach math). What I needed was help from a couple of very well-organized parents who loved/knew math.
In terms of curriculum I suggest you look at the Berkeley Math Circle website, or the Math Circles Wiki. A visit to the LHS bookstore and looking through materials for teachers would be another good starting place (Marilyn Burns has written a number of good books.)
"Math for Girls and Other Problem Solvers," put out by LHS is an old book, but has a lot of group-oriented games and problems.
Have fun doing the research.
I realized I forgot to mention the Julia Robinson Math Festival.
They have problem sets on that website.
http://jrmf.org/
I suggest you look into the Berkeley Math Circle (BMC). This is headed by Zvezdelina Stankova, runs from the second grade through the end of high school (two lower levels, five upper levels), and the classes are held at UC Berkeley. They have a pretty good website (revamped last year) with some available materials (see http://mathcircle.berkeley.edu/), and Zvezda has published at least two books with BMC materials that are relevant. The instructors for the classes are around 75% women, and more than half the students are girls, so it is geared toward your audience of interest. The classes are on Tuesday evenings during the year (they run in parallel), starts up again in September. You can probably reach out directly to Zvezda for more information/guidance.