10-week maths outreach programme for 4th and 5th years in Trinity. Deadline for applications is this Sunday.

[Lydia Flynn]

Hi everyone,

Last year I ran a maths outreach programme called Student Leadership and Maths (SLAM) for 4th and 5th year students. Students came to Trinity on Saturday mornings for 11 weeks (which were not consecutive) and did maths and personal development activities (public speaking for example). The key part of the programme was that the participants set up their own maths (and in one case, coding) clubs for younger students (typically first years but also in their local primary). It was quite successful: over 70 completed the programme from over 30 schools in Dublin and we had a reach of 500+ from the maths clubs. However, there is a lot I want to do much better this year :) For one, we are aligning the sessions to MATHletes Challenge in the hope that this will increase engagement on the student clubs side of the things.

I'm posting here because

a) your students might be interested and (You can find the application form here: http://studentleadershipandmaths.org/application/)

b) you might have some great ideas for activities that we can run with the participants. 

The maths activities that we run on Saturdays are for the participants (4th and 5th years) themselves. However, they could also be for the participants to do with their own students (for example, cutting a circle into sectors to show the area for a circle formula). We are looking for activities where the students have to work in groups and talk to each other. We have access to one computer per student if needs be. The content does not have to be related to the curriculum. The content must be accessible for those who struggle with maths. Although it is a maths outreach, we found students last year to be a fairly representative sample. 

If anyone has any pointers or wants to know more about the project I would be delighted to talk to you.

Lydia

P.S. This is the email out today to most (we did try to reach everyone) schools in Dublin. We sent it out just to Dublin schools because outside of Dublin is too far to travel for most students for 10 weeks, but anyone who can get to Trinity is welcome.

SLAM Student Leadership and Maths at Trinity

Deadline for applications: Sunday 7th December Hello again! This is a gentle reminder that the deadline for student applications for SLAM is this Sunday 7th December 2014. As SLAM starts on Saturday 13th December, this deadline is final. There have already been over 100 applications, so we encourage you to get yours in quick! Warm regards, Lydia Flynn M.Sc Student, B.A. (Neuroscience), Sch., Centre for Research in IT in Education,  Trinity College Dublin. ======================================== This email is about Student Leadership and Maths (SLAM), a 10-week outreach programme for 4th and 5th years at Trinity College, Dublin. It is the second year we are running it, and this time we are aligning the programme to Mathletes.  Last year, 75 students were awarded a certificate from 32 schools across Dublin! We are looking for motivated students to come to Trinity on Saturday mornings (10.30am to 12.30pm) for maths and personal development activities (public speaking, organising, team-building, teaching maths etc.) We often get asked what 'type' of students we're looking for. The answer is that anyone who is eager to participate and set up their own maths club is welcome. The key aspect of the programme is that participants set up and run their own maths clubs in their own schools for younger students. These clubs typically use Khan Academy (an incredible, free online platform of thousands of videos and interactive activities). We are looking for a few students from each school to participate. Should several students from the same school be interested, they can run a maths club for their local primary school as well. Using Khan Academy is not a requisite for participation, and last year one group of students used codeacademy.org.    As a teacher, your involvement is really as a point of contact/support for the student. We are eager for the student to take as much responsibility as possible for running their own maths club! We hope you find the project interesting and will encourage your students to participate in it. We have lots of fun activities planned and we believe it will be a great experience for the participants! The deadline for applications is Sunday 7th December 2014. You will be notified on Monday 8th December by email as to whether your application was successful.  We kindly ask you to only apply if you/your student is committed to fully participating in the programme. We will do our best to accommodate as many as possible but we fear that we may get more applications than we can cater for.  You can find the application form here: http://studentleadershipandmaths.org/application/ The first session will be Saturday the 13th December 2014 and we will resume after Christmas on Saturday 10th January 2015. The programme will run for a further 8 weeks ending in early May alongside Mathletes. Thus, SLAM will not happen every single week. Final dates will be announced shortly. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask by email - sla...@gmail.com. Lastly, we've just set up a website and all emails will be posted there too.

[James Crook]

Lydia, this sounds great.

Possibly useful to you, if you've not seen her videos already, look at what Vi-Hart does with maths, and if you know her videos already, look at this very recent one from George Hart - a lovely project and a gentler pace.

I've been thinking about this, and suggesting these resources, because I've recently been thinking about gender bias in STEM.  Mathletics is, or can be, competitive, and the competitive element might discourage girls participating in the maths clubs, so something to counterbalance brought in at the same time might be good.

--James.

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[Lydia Flynn]

Hey James, 

Thanks for the links (of course I know Vi Hart!). SLAM is reasonably great, but I am not happy yet with the activities for Saturday sessions. I stress this because we got great feedback etc., but it is just not consistently great enough yet for every student. I was totally thrown last year in a session when some students couldn't work out a very basic distance, speed and time question. After probing it turns out they didn't know how to multiply fractions. This year I want to cater for this level too.

We had no problems with gender, ability or socioeconomic balances last year and from a quick look at the applications this year there will not be such problems again. We have over 100 applications now. There is also no obligation to take part in MATHletes or use KA etc. The competitive element might also encourage girls :) 

L