RED WINS

We had the students in Math Club vote for their favorite T-Shirt design and the RED T-Shirt with the Math Pentathlon Shooting Stars won the popular vote by a landslide! One section of students actually tied 10-10 between the two finalists, but in most classes the vote for this design was overwhelming and it won both the electoral college vote and the popular vote! As part of the Math Club all students will get a T-Shirt but if you want one too and haven't ordered one, be sure to contact us right away!

WEEK THREE: 9/30

We continued playing our first games this week and reviewed a few game worksheets to help us think about strategy and imagine some what if scenarios. This was our last week for learning CALLA, FIAR, & CONTIG 60 but not our last week playing it! After each learning section, we'll have an Earthquake Game Day where the kids will have fun playing the games we have learned to date while having to be on the move from game to game and continuously changing their thinking.

The best part of this program is cooperative learning! We play in groups of four with two students on each team, who sit across the table diagonally from each other. The number one goal for our kids at this point is to say, "Partner, I'm going to make this move, because . . . What do you think?" We are trying to help our friends with learning the game and understanding strategic moves that help us to play better. We know that we are supposed to help each other now, so we can all play well at tournament when we are playing against students from other schools. The kids are really cognizant of including their partners in their decision making. This translates to better sharing and math skills for everyone.

Need Game?

The Math Pentathlon Institute is having a Back-T0-School Special on their games. If you are interested in purchasing a set for home use, be sure to visit their website soon! Offer expires October 5th.

http://www.innovativeecom.com/b2c/browse.pl?owner=90

T-Shirt Finalists

Here are our two T-Shirt Design Finalists! We had 17 entries and the decision to narrow the field was so difficult we had two rounds of voting. These designs will be sent to the students next Tuesday when they will vote for our club T-Shirt.

CONGRATULATIONS to FBE Mom & Artist Betsy Melton for both of these designs!

A special honorable mention for all of the artists who shared their time and talents in creating fantastic artwork for our club T-shirts: Stephen Dudley, Lauren Mack, Chanta Sheidow, Nikki Muirhead, and Lisa Mack.

WEEK TWO, 9/23

Today we learned the How-To's of our first game! For a quick look at the game highlights and rules, follow the links below.

DIV I: Calla
http://mathpentath.org/pdf/highlightsdiv1.pdf

DIV II: FIAR (Four-In-A-Row)
http://mathpentath.org/pdf/highlightsdiv2.pdf

DIV III: Contig 60
http://mathpentath.org/pdf/highlightsdiv3.pdf

The kids did GREAT today! We had a fun time.

WEEK ONE, 9/16

Hopefully, by now, your student has shared some of their fun from today's class with you! All of the classes reviewed what it means to be a PENTATHLETE and a member of the Fern Bluff Math Pentathlon Bobcats. We also talked about the purple FLAG CARD that students pass from player to player to indicate which person has the current move.

DIV I: Students learned a lot about standard configurations (how numbers appear in a way that is easily recognized such as found on dice, cards, or dominoes). We also practiced how to set up the CALLA game board using standard configurations. Send homes included a reference sheet for standard configurations and a few practice sheets.

DIV II: Learned three games which progressively became more challenging where the object was to get your chips lined up three in a row. The game "Five Chip" was sent home for practice play. Ask your student how to play! No need to get blue or red chips: use pennies and dimes as markers.

DIV III: After a brief review of standard configuration, students rolled dice to play "Cover Up" where the object is to cover a bingo type board of numbers by adding, subtracting, multiplying, or dividing the numbers showing on the dice.

NOTE: Send home worksheets are always optional. This is a club that teaches math, but is supposed to be FUN! If you have time and desire to do these, fantastic, that's why we are sending them home.

EMAIL

We will be communicating primarily through email so please be sure that your email isn’t sending important information to your junk folder!

You should have received several notes by now including:

Important information about Math Club,

• Tuesday’s rotating staff assignments,
• Tournament Supervisor groups, and a
• Class list and meeting room reminder.

If you have not received these from lisamack@austin.rr.com, check your junk folder as your spam filter might be working overtime!

Enrollment Closed

Registration is now closed for Math Pentathlon 2008-2009.

Registration Confirmation

If you registered your student at the Math Pentathlon Orientation Session, you should have received an email confirmation by now. If you have not, please email us.

Today, confirmation letters were put in teacher mailboxes. When you receive these, please review and edit your information, complete and sign the parent commitment agreement, and submit your student's contract (if not already on file.)

Classes start Tuesday, September 16th!

Calling All Artists!

The Fern Bluff Math Pentathlon Bobcats Club needs a look. A logo. A T-Shirt design of our very own. When we go to the National Tournament next spring with schools from all over the state, we want everyone to know that Fern Bluff Elementary is in the house. Kinder students will wear them. Moms & Dads will wear them. Teachers will wear them. So we need a design that works for small and large T-shirts. Think broad strokes that screen print well. We'll want to print on a color T-Shirt so plan to incorporate that into your design. Forget pink, purple or any other color T-shirt that doesn't work well for everyone. Try yellow, orange, gold, red, maroon, or another hot color for the actual T-Shirt but don't use blue or green because many of the teams at tournament have a blue or green T-Shirt and we want to stand out!

Math Pentathlon is all about learning math through game play. Our students learn and play five games each in their respective divisions, and are called PENTATHLETES. For inspiration, take a look at what it's all about at www.mathpentath.org where you can see what some of the games look like and also see t-shirt designs used by other schools. MUST HAVE the phrases "Fern Bluff Elementary" and "Math Pentathlon" in the artwork, although not necessarily together. There are no other design requirements. Submit your design to the school, attn: Lisa Mack by 3:00 PM September 19th. The Math Club volunteer staff will review all of the entries and choose their favorites to present to the Math Club students. Because this is an exciting election year, we plan to model the voting process of our nation:

1. Each student will cast a vote for their favorite design.
2. The design that has the majority of votes within each of the seven sections of students will receive one vote to reflect the popular vote of their section.
3. The winning design for our T-Shirts will need only a simple majority of those seven votes.

We'll even consider primaries, if necessary!

If your design is chosen to represent our club, you'll win our heartfelt appreciation, bragging rights as over 150 people proudly wear your design, and your very own T-shirt, of course.

Registration & Enrollment

WOW! What excitement at Fern Bluff Elementary! We now have over 120 students registered for the Math Pentathlon program. There are just a few openings remaining and we will continue to accept registrations first-received, first enrolled. Classes begin on Tuesday, September 16th. Club Fees: $89 per student, which pays for coach training, weekly instruction, games and materials, snacks, club T-Shirt, and tournament entry fees. Parent Commitment: We expect that a parent of every student will sign up as a floater volunteer for five meetings and/or as a judge on a Saturday for the national tournament if being at school in the afternoon is not possible. Scholarships Available.