STEPS FOR PLANNING YOUR FAMILY MATH NIGHT

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  1. At the beginning of the school year the principal and teachers who will be participating in Family Math Night need to meet and set a date. This date should be put on the school calendar immediately and sent home to the parents. This will also make it easier for everyone involved with planning other activities at your school to know dates that are already reserved. At that time, the place where Family Math Night will be held should also be reserved. If it is in your school gym, you need to make sure there are no kinds of sport activities that will be using the gym.
  2. Six weeks before the actual date of Family Math Night, the teachers involved should meet. They should decide how their family night would be organized. The remaining suggestions will act as if the organization method decided upon is parents and students rotating through various math stations. Each math station could represent a math standard. If a large crowd is expected, extra stations could be used such as calculator math, technology and math, and/or two stations could be developed for one standard. Other decisions to be made are what will the math stations contain, who will be responsible for making activities for each station, and what committees need to be formed. A suggestion would be to have each teacher take a standard and be responsible for developing his/her own hands-on fun, engaging math activity for a math station. Another important decision is the time. A suggestion would be to provide plenty of time for registration. Warning: If your time is from 6:00 to 8:00 and you have allowed no time for registration, you really will not get started until 6:30 because it will take a half hour to register about 50 to 60 people.
    All Teachers at a Math Station: Begin to look at ideas for your math activity for your math station. Make sure it is linked to your standard. Make sure it is a hands-on, engaging activity, and make sure it is fun. Also make sure you have plenty of manipulatives for all parents and students that attend. A suggestion would be to also label your table in a way that can be easily seen. Each teacher could cut a pennant out of cardstock. Label it with your standard. Tape the pennant to a yardstick, and stick it in your plastic bucket or flowerpot. All participants will easily see it. The suggested committees and their responsibilities are as follows:
  3. COMMITTEES

A. ADVERTISEMENT COMMITTEE: Flyers should be designed and sent out to parents at least two weeks ahead of time. A suggestion would be to ask parents to RSVP so you have an estimate of how many people will attend. But remember, there will always be late arrivals. Press Releases should be sent out one week before the Family Math Night. The school marquee should have Family Math Night information put on it for a week before Family Math Night. Hang posters in the hall to remind the students. Have it announced on the morning news. Have teachers talk it up! A pizza party or ice cream social for the homeroom with the most attendees could also be an incentive. Teachers could also offer incentives such as a free homework pass if the students attend. One week before, send home reminder letter. The day before, remind the students of the upcoming evening events. The day of Family Math Night remind students one more time! You could even display the door prizes the day of to help/encourage students to not forget.

B. PRIZE COMMITTEE: The first thing to be considered is do you want prizes, and if so, where? Do you want them at each station? You do not have to have prizes. However, if you decide to have prizes, they could be given away as door prizes. Two people might want to work on this committee, as it can be very time consuming; or each teacher could be responsible for their own station door prize. An amount of money should be decided on if all items are to be bought. A suggestion is to put a plastic bucket or flower pot on each table with items that could be utilized by parents to work with their children at home on math. You can make a lot of these things yourself, some can be bought, and some can be donated. A nearby business could be asked to donate money for all the prizes. Suggestions for math station prizes:

1.  NUMBER SENSE: paper money, dominoes, deck of cards, Cuisenaire rods kit, 100 number chart, base ten blocks, dice, color cubes, color counters, straws, tooth picks, clothes pins, ruler, buttons, peanuts, empty egg cartons, spinner, game markers, index cards, scissors, glue, post-its, tape measure, and number line, tile squares. You could also give parents information about Using Virtual Manipulatives on the Web.

2.  COMPUTATION: index cards, blank adding machine tape, tooth picks, tongue depressors, spinner, dice, ruler, number line, paper money, old sales magazines with items and prices or sales flyers from newspapers, straws, beans, multiplication flash cards, addition flash cards, division flash cards, subtraction flash cards, scissors, glue, color crayons, beads, nylon string, Hit the Deck card game, 100 number chart, 25 number chart, multiplication chart, color tiles, manipulative clock, abacus, fraction board, deck of cards masking tape, construction paper, and calendar.

3.  ALGEBRA AND FUNCTIONS: Battleship Game, number line, paper money, graph paper, package of M & M’s, 3 different kinds of beans, ruler, construction paper, scissors, colored pencils, glue.

4.  GEOMETRY: pizza board, geometric shapes, ruler, geometric magnet links, masking tape, post-its, scissors, construction paper, tan grams, markers, poster board, old magazines, graph paper, game markers, wallpaper scraps, index cards, ruler, yardstick, protractor, tiles or paper squares.

5.  MEASUREMENT: tape measurement, yardstick, ruler, meter stick, one-half meter stick, string or ribbon, masking tape, index cards, paper money, blank roll of adding machine tape, poster board, colored pencils, markers, different size lids, manipulative clocks, calendar, stopwatch, measuring cups, measuring spoons, empty soft drink cans, toothpicks, drawing paper, paper clips, empty containers of all sizes, sugar cubes, coat hangers to make balance scale, thermometers, graph paper.

6.  DATA ANALYSIS AND PROBABILITY: assorted buttons, markers, ruler, assorted candy, assorted beans, empty roll of adding machine tape, graph paper, different colors of dice, deck of cards, colored paper, scratch paper, index cards, pens, pencils, colored pencils, scissors, glue, masking tape, cube-shaped blocks, spinners, ruler, paperclips, checkerboard, game markers.

7.  PROBLEM SOLVING: Sudoka puzzles, wooden puzzle shapes, Set Game (Card game can be bought or played on the internet at The Set Daily Puzzle), index cards, ruler, yardstick, pens, paper, colored pencils, graph paper, colored paper squares, assortment of buttons, old catalogs.

C. REFRESHMENTS COMMITTEE: Some choices are to ask the PTA to provide the refreshments that might be just cookies and drinks or they might want to fix hot dogs, chips, drinks, and a cookie. If PTA does not want to be involved and the teachers would be responsible for the refreshments, the suggestion would be to keep it simple, and have refreshments before the games begin.

D. REGISTRATION COMMITTEE: One way of keeping track of the parents and students that attend is to have a sign-in sheet for each homeroom teacher or each math teacher. Parents and students can sign the sheets as they arrive. Each parent should receive a ticket with the number of stations on it.

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7

These tickets should be made ahead of time. On each ticket, circle one number. Then each parent will start at the station circled. That is the way to keep your stations evenly populated. You can also have raffle tickets on the registration table for the students. That way you can use those tickets for the door prizes from each math station that you give away at the end of the night.

E.  SET-UP COMMITTEE: The suggestion would be to have at least two

people on this committee. This committee will be responsible for setting up the gym with tables for the math stations and chairs for the presenter and parents to sit down. In addition, a table will be needed for registration. If the teachers are responsible for the refreshments, that area will have to also be made ready.

G. NOTEBOOKS FOR PARENTS COMMITTEE: First, you should decide if you would like to give parents a notebook for his/her student’s grade level.

This notebook could contain the following:

1.  Every Child Mathematically Proficient: Top Ten Tips for Parents-Learning First Alliance

2.  Glossary for Specific Grade Level Terms (These can probably be found at the back of the student textbook.

3.  Grade Level State Standards

4.  After each standard, a list of activities that parent could do at home with his/her child.

5.  Copies of charts particular to the students’ grade level such as, hundreds chart, place value charts, multiplication table, addition table, graph paper, etc.

F. EVALUATION COMMITTEE: A suggestion would be to make two different evaluation sheets, one for the parents and one for the teachers that are involved. Every parent should receive an evaluation form with a date you want it returned. Make the evaluation short and specific. Do not ask for too many write-in answers. After gathering the evaluation forms from the parents and the teachers, a report should be organized and discussed with the principal and teachers involved. This will give you information for planning your next Family Math Night.