Dear fellow parents and others concerned about education,

As we face historically low levels of resources for education, I'd like to share an opportunity to reach higher. As a parent and a math professor, it has been difficult to see my daughter forfeit some of her education on furlough days. Inspired by some "furlough clubs" which have been running, next year I plan to identify some math worksheets and activities for my daughter to do for a couple hours total on furlough days (and some time on other days off and early-release times as well) which will supplement the school curriculum in ways which are in line with the new Common Core standards.

Forty-three states, including Oregon, have recently adopted these standards . They represent the best understanding of college and career readiness as endorsed by teachers, educational experts, administrators and mathematicians, all working together. All curricula in Oregon and most around the country will be modified over the next few years to meet these standards. As a mathematician with strong interest in and some experience with K-12 education, I have had the opportunity to discuss the Common Core Math Standards at length with their lead writer, and I might join his team in an effort to elaborate them through problems ).

From discussions with other parents, it seems that there is some strong interest in not only reclaiming educational time but also taking the opportunity to make use of recently developed consensus efforts in mathematics education. But once there is a variety of children participating, considerable effort will be needed to put these materials together at multiple grade levels. I would like to find a group of people comfortable with mathematics (teachers, former math tutors, people who regularly use math, faculty, retired faculty, or just those who enjoy math at any level) who can look with me at the current curricula along with the Common Core to determine what additional activities would fit. Educators from our local school districts have expressed a willingness to help. These activities would at first be drawn from current local curricula, the Singapore curriculum, and other sources, but would draw increasingly from activities developed for the Common Core as those become available. A core group could then communicate - through e-mail and small meetings - with parents and other care providers who want to incorporate these activities. The activities would need to be suitable for a variety of adults to lead, and thus would probably lean more towards worksheet/ skill building rather than explorational activities.

I have reserved the Gumwood room on the top floor of the U of O's EMU (student union, at 13th and University) on Tuesday June 7th at 6pm for a meeting to discuss both the mathematics and the logistics of coordinating resources to meet interest (see proposed agenda below). Please send an e-mail to EugeneMathClub@gmail.com to let me know if you are interested in having your child (or a group of children you care for) do such math enrichment and/ or if you can help in any capacity (mathematical or logistical support). And please feel free to forward this invitation to friends, parent councils, etc. Because I value equity of opportunity as well as the study of math, I would love to share these efforts more broadly and can envision gathering resources (and hiring help) for a more substantial and refined effort if the demand is overwhelming.

Best wishes, Dev

Dev Sinha, Associate Professor of Math at the U of O, and Edison Elementary parent

Proposed agenda:

Outline of basic idea, and discussion of demand and scope - 10 minutes.
Identifying people willing to help on the mathematics education side, and discussion of what they might produce, and resources/ possible partnerships to be aware of - 20 minutes.

To get started: What might be produced could be a web page for each grade level and/or regular e-mail which point to worksheets (which might need to be purchased), group activities, computer-based activities including lessons on the web etc. In the end it should be clear what are the most strongly endorsed activities at each point in the curriculum. Some question-and-answer meetings to support those doing the instruction would also be helpful.
Identifying people willing to help on the logistical side (this is critical, since I plan to focus on the mathematical side), and discussion of what they might do, and resources/ possible partnerships to be aware of - 20 minutes.

To get started: What volunteers could do on the logistical side could include support for dissemination of information, helping parents and caregivers who are interested in these activities to partner with each other, volunteer coordination, outreach efforts, possible inclusion of other subject areas, and help to those who cannot afford suggested materials.

Dear Eugene Math Club community, We would like to update you, following the meeting last week and other recent events.

There was strong enough response, both by e-mail and at the meeting last week (over seventy people initially), for us to feel that development of a math enrichment site and resources around it would be successful and well-used. We are also discussing partnerships with the districts, various groups at the U of O, etc.
While there will be both a "math team" and an "outreach team", people asked to be generally informed of activities on both sides. Thus, we will start by e-mailing everyone, expecting that communication won't be so frequent so as to be intrusive. We will also start by just Bcc'ing a list, before perhaps eventually switching to listserve tools.
The math team will have two "layers", a group actively working on identifying materials and a larger group who is will keep abreast of this work and do some of the work to disseminate it more widely (for example leading "math clubs" at individual schools or helping to answer questions of parents and other volunteers). The entire community is welcome to give feedback to the math team, and in particular bring resources to our attention.
The first math team meeting will be in the week of June 27. I will send a follow-up e-mail to schedule this meeting, as well as to start discussing the mathematics educational framework.
I will definitely be involved in the Illustrative Mathematics Project, and so will be able to bring experience with the new Common Core State Standards in Mathematics to this project.
We can wait until the math team gets some momentum before the outreach team first meets in earnest. In the mean time feel free to forward the original e-mail (posted at http://pages.uoregon.edu/dps/eugenemathclub.html) or any other information to others who might be interested in having their children involved and/or helping out.
We will first concentrate on grades 1-5, with a goal of some substantial completion by the beginning of the school year. In the longer term, we're not forgetting about the higher grades. In particular, there have been some good suggestions for using open source software used at the U of O to provide practice at higher levels.
There are ten furlough and other non-instructional days in the 4J calendar. If students do two hours of math on each of those days and an additional hour per week, that would be 50 additional hours of math.
At our meeting the outreach team was asked to consider "commitment mechanisms," perhaps approaching local businesses to donate something to recognize children who complete 10 or 20 or 50 additional hours of math work (e.g an ice-cream). A big kickoff event on the first furlough day was also suggested.

Dear Eugene Math Club community, We would like to schedule our first math-focussed meeting the week of June 27th. If you are interested in contributing to the discussion, please indicate your availability at: http://doodle.com/akyu5f53tz5wrqys We will announce the best time as well as the meeting place (likely to be in the EMU on campus) in a follow-up e-mail. Anyone who wants to attend is welcome. The goal will be to start the work of producing math enrichment guidance. We will mostly be "aggregators," pointing people to material which is out there which would fit well rather than developing material ourselves. We will point to four kinds of material:

Instructional, for example the videos from the Khan Academy.
Skill Building, worksheets and games (at the lower levels) which build procedural and basic conceptual fluency. These could be pulled from the local curricula, the Singapore curriculum, sites such as ixl.com, and betterlesson.org, A broad community of parents and other caregivers should be comfortable in doing these straightforward activities with children.
Building Mathematical Habits of Mind, these are activities which in the terminology of the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics (CCSSM) address the Mathematical Practices such as providing and critiquing reasoning. We envision them mostly being pulled from CCSSM problem banks, once those are available. They will be more challenging to do for the children, though the process of an adult doing them along with children and explaining their process would be valuable.
Challenge Problems, to serve children who need opportunities beyond the basic curriculum.

The way we will decide what material to point to is to start with the CCSSM and the 2007 Oregon standards and look for places where material will be expected once we have switched to CCSSM but is currently not in the curriculum. For example, in first grade CCSSM expect students to add and subtract within 20 while the 2007 Oregon standards expect addition up to ten. For another example, in third grade the CCSSM asks students to be able to complete two-step word problems involving the basic four operations, while there are no similar expectations in the 2007 Oregon standards. (There are 2007 Oregon standards also not present in the CCSSM; we are focusing on the differences in the other direction since that is where the opportunity for enrichment is.) Your homework, to prepare for this meeting if you plan to attend, is to familiarize yourself with:

the CCSSM (in grades 1-5) at: http://www.corestandards.org/the-standards/mathematics
the 2007 Oregon standards at: www.ode.state.or.us/teachlearn/subjects/mathematics/adopted-k-8-standards.pdf
the Oregon Department of Education's comparison (which they call "crosswalks") between the 2007 standards and the CCSSM available for download as an entire document or by grade at: http://www.ode.state.or.us/search/page/?id=3211
ixl.com, one of the better used and organized math sites. See in particular their standards-organized interface at: http://www.ixl.com/math/standards/oregon
betterlesson.org, a large repository where teachers and others share material they have developed. You need to sign up (for free) to have access.
the Khan academy, a library of freely available short lessons (which have recently received a lot of media attention). Look in particular at "developmental math": http://www.khanacademy.org/#developmental-math

A second part of your homework is to bring other sites and sources to consider if there are any not listed above which you particularly like. I will also bring some materials from the local curricula and the Singapore curriculum to look at. Best wishes, Dev

Hi all, We will have the first "math group" meeting next Tuesday at 5pm, in the Mozart at the Eugene 4J School District Ed Center, which is at 200 North Monroe Street (very near the rose garden; see http://www.4j.lane.edu/driving for directions). We should have a nice group of parents, college instructors, teachers, future teachers, and school district representatives. The goal will be to some to enough agreement about what our group will produce and how we will produce it so that we can start doing so. Agenda:

Discussion of the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics (CCSSM). (15 min)
Discussion of kinds of material we might point to or even produce, including instructional material, skill building activities, problems which build mathematical habits of mind, and challenge/ group problems. (Fun problem of the richer kind to reflect on: can you all of the of ways that one can write 7 as the sum of positive integers? For example 7 = 5 + 2 and 7 = 3 + 2 + 1 + 1 are two ways. Can you explain why your list is complete?) (10 min)
Discussion and first decision around workflow. For example, at present I would prefer to proceed with everyone working together one grade at a time, rather than treat grades in parallel (though I could be convinced otherwise). But within a grade, how do we divide the workload (by standard or be resource are the two possibilities I see). (15 min)
Focussed discussion and decisions on how to divide first work. (10 min)
Tour of resources available (not necessarily for checkout, but available to look at) at the Ed Center. (10 min)

Once the math group starts producing, we can ask the outreach/logistics group to help figure out how to deliver what we find, and in particular start building a website. The goal is to have things available for people to look at sooner rather than later, so they can provide feedback. In the meantime, we continue to ask you to pass information along to friends who might be interested (we are getting about 3-5 inquiries each week). You can point them to http://pages.uoregon.edu/dps/eugenemathclub.html for a current rudimentary website which just has the e-mails sent out so far. I'm very excited to see some of you next Tuesday! Best wishes, Dev