ey of Women Engineers
DR070
Math Achievement Through Hands-On Internships 2000 (M.A.T.H. 2000 Internship
Program)
Executive Summary:
The M.A.T.H. 2000 Internship program consisted of fourteen 8th grade girls from Houston Independent School District and 10 SWE-Houston Area (SWE-HA) section mentors. The primary focus of the program was to build the interns confidence in their mathematical skills and knowledge. The program provided a venue for SWE-HA members to expose to the girls, their vast knowledge and understanding of mathematics and experiences as successful women in technical careers. The internship was held at The Children’s’ Museum Houston (CMH). The M.A.T.H. interns and SWE-HA mentors volunteered for 2.5 hours per weekend from July 27 – August 31, 2000. The interns and mentors were responsible for teaching the museum patrons, the components included in the exhibit “Everyone Counts! Todo Modo Cuenta”. The interns and mentors taught activities such as Mancala, which focused on many different math concepts, including patterns, strategy, functions and algebra. The M.A.T.H. internship benefited the girls because it increased their self-esteem, confidence in mathematics and served as a valuable volunteer experience. When asked if the math program had changed their feelings toward math, one girl stated “Yes because now I see that math is more than numbers and words, it has to do with strategy and thinking”. Another intern said “That the program has taught me to be more open minded about others and learn to teach others”. For these interns the M.A.T.H. internship was more than something to do on the weekend, it was a place where they could come to be a part of a special group, where they could explore career options, where they could discover new skills and serve their community.
Program
Description
The
M.A.T.H. 2000 Internship (M.A.T.H.) program was established through a
developing relationship between The Children’s’ Museum Houston (CMH) and
Society of Women Engineers Houston Area Section (SWE-HA). The program launched in the Spring 2000 in conjunction
with the math exhibit; “Everyone Counts! Todo el Mundo Cuenta!”. The math goals, objectives and teaching
messages behind the exhibit were as follows:
·
provide meaningful
opportunities to explore math that are relevant, fun, engaging and exciting for
all learners.
·
ignite a passion for
math learning that builds confidence and self-esteem in all learners.
·
provide opportunities
to highlight the many and varied cultural connections in mathematics
·
and provide opportunities
for visitors to develop problem-solving skills that increase their
understanding of math.
The
M.A.T.H. program was established to satisfy the goals, objectives and teaching
messages of the exhibit. The internship
program was to create an environment that respects all learning styles and
provide opportunities for math exploration, which have no wrong answer such as
tangrams, cultural games or puzzles. It
is often said that children gain attitudes about math from adults in their
lives, so the internship program was to create a comfortable environment where
it was acceptable for different people to solve problems in different
ways.
The
primary focus of the program was to establish an intern-focused program to
encourage young girls to pursue careers in science, math and technology, while
involving them in their community. The
M.A.T.H. internship program would consist of 8th grade girls who
were interested in math. The purpose of
the program was for the girls to share their skills, knowledge and enthusiasm
about math with young museum visitors and their families. The hope was to ignite in the girls a
lifelong passion for learning math.
The
primary goal was to establish a program that focused on building a young girls
confidence in her mathematical skills and knowledge. Other goals of the program included:
·
exposing the girls to
math and how math is used in our everyday lives
·
introducing the girls
to the varied careers that use math,
and
·
increasing the
visibility of SWE-HA through a partnership with a global organization as The
CMH.
SWE-HA
and the CMH worked with 12 middle schools to recruit 20 girls to participate in
the program. The targeted schools were
Jackson, Eastwood Academy, Chrysalis, Burbank, Hamilton, Key, Dowling, Hartman,
Deady, Welch, Sharpstown and MC Williams.
Of these schools, 19 applications were received, 9 from Jackson, 5 from
Hartman, 2 from Hamilton, 2 from Deady and 1 from Dowling. One application was received from Albert
Thomas middle school.
The
program was held from April1, 2000 to August 3, 2000. The program consisted of 14 M.A.T.H. interns and 10 SWE-HA
mentors. The interns and SWE-HA mentors
attended 4 workshops and worked 2.5 hours a week from May 27 to August 3. Each intern and mentor was assigned a specific
shift to work per weekend.
The
program opened with a workshop held at The CMH on April 1, 2000. The workshop was held as an introduction to
The CMH for both the SWE-HA mentors and the M.A.T.H. interns. The workshop, which was held as a “Welcome
to the Museum”, was focused on learning about the Museum and its visitors. The interns and mentors were encouraged to
experience personally all of the hands-on activities that the Museum has
established for its visitors. At this workshop, Policies and Procedures were
submitted and reviewed. One of the
Museums Junior Volunteers spoke about their experience working at the Museum
and the joy they received from their job.
The volunteer spoke about how confident she is in herself and what she
believes that she can accomplish.
Sample activities were performed.
These activities were the same concept as some of the components in the
exhibit. The activities were split into two stations and each group spent
approximately 8 minutes at each station.
The activities were: abacus, 100’s chart exploration, operations
puzzles, pattern block graphing, pattern building with pattern blocks,
geoboards, tangrams, measuring challenge, measurement exploration, manacala,
"Down & Out” logic and number game and Connect Four.
The
2nd workshop, held on April 29, 2000, was held on the campus of Rice
University and taught by Dr. Anne Papakonstantinou, director of the Rice
University School Mathematics Project.
The purpose of the workshop was to learn some of the component skill
sets that the interns and mentors would be teaching to others in the exhibit.
The workshop opened with the SWE-HA mentors giving a brief description of their
backgrounds and how math effects their lives daily. The workshop taught the math skills behind The Shuttle puzzle,
which is a game where you move an object in the minimum number of moves. The game starts with a board with 6 blue
pegs on one side, 6 red pegs on the other side with an empty space between
them. The object of the game was in the
minimum number of moves, interchange the blue and the red pegs, on the board.
The rules were that you could move to a hole that was next to a peg, you could
jump a peg, but only one peg and it must be of the other color, and you could
not go backwards. You must start with the empty space in the middle and end
that way. When the game became too
difficult with 6 pegs, we decided to make the problem simpler by using 2 pegs
on each side of the space in the middle. After 2, 3 and 4 pairs were
interchanged a table was made, depicting the number of pairs of pegs and the
number of moves it took to interchange the pegs. A rule was then found to
relate x to y. It turned out that the
shuttle game was actually a quadratic equation in which we used math concepts
such as patterns, functions and algebra to solve a problem. At the end we could use the equation found
to determine how many moves it would take to interchange 50 pegs. The interns and mentors learned that a
simple game can turn into a creative and challenging math problem.
During
this workshop we learned that a 100’s board can be used for data analysis,
statistics, probability, numbers and operations. We learned to recognize not only simple patterns like n+5, but to
go beyond and think of complex patterns like 2n+17.
On
May 6, 2000 all the girls were honored at the SWE-HA Student Reception. The girls were given Certificates of
Achievement.
On
May 11, 2000 a make-up workshop was held for the girls who could not attend the
introduction workshop at Museum.
The
3rd workshop was held on May 20, 2000 at the Museum. During this workshop the interns and mentors
visited the fabrication shop, at the Museum, to see the actual exhibit
components. The interns learned what to
do when they arrived to the museum and where to find supplies and activities. A
list of each informance was given with the different learning strands: numbers
and operations, patterns, functions and algebra, geometry and spatial sense,
measurement, and data analysis, statistics and probability. This workshop,
which was very activity based, gave the girls a chance to ask questions about
he different exhibit components. Many
of the questions focused on how do I explain the math in a game. The learning objective and questions to ask
of the Museum visitors was discussed for each component of each learning
strand.
The
Museum math exhibit, “Everyone Counts! Todo el Mundo Cuenta!” officially opened
on May 27, 2000, the first day of the M.A.T.H. Internship program. The interns and mentors were assigned to a
specific shift, to work for 2.5 hours every weekend for 8 weekends, with the 4th
of July weekend off. Two SWE-HA mentors were present during each shift, three
on Saturday and two on Sunday. The
SWE-HA mentor played various roles. She
was there to answer any of the interns questions, provide feedback to the
interns regarding strategy, pattern, function of an exhibit component, and help
the interns garner confidence in speaking with people and their mathematical
skills. The role of the intern was to
assist visitors with exhibit exploration and answer questions related to the
exhibit Everyone Counts!. They were to
keep the exhibit neat and safe, restock exhibit activities and provide
suggestions for activities and maintenance.
They were to assist with activities including setup and take down of
activity materials. They were to
provide a 5-15 minute special informance related to mathematics to visitors and
use props to help provide a more in-depth exploration of exhibit
information.
A social/mixer was held on June 22,
2000 with the interns and their parents to measure the milestones of the
program. The mixer was an interactive
event focused on if the interns felt as if their attitudes had changed
regarding math. We also wanted to
determine if the parents has seen a change in the girls attitude,
self-confidence and self esteem since enterning the program. This event allowed
the Museum volunteers and mentors to interact with the interns in a relaxed
social environment to talk openly and freely about any concerns they may have
regarding the program.
On
August 3, 2000 a reception was held for the interns and their parents to
congratulate them for the excellent job that they had done during the duration
of the internship. As a special gift,
each girl was given an SAT Math Study guide and a mancala game. The mancala game represented everything that
was learned throughout the internship, patterns, functions, algebra, number and
operations, strategy, mental math, grasp of visual representations of numbers,
analysis and probability. This time was
also used as a final evaluation of the program.
Schedule
|
Date: |
Event: |
Deadline Met:
(Comments) |
|
January 14,
2000-February 15,2000 |
Submit designs for
T-shirts |
Designs submitted, CMH
graphics department working on final designs |
|
January 21, 2000 |
Final SWE-HA
application comments to CMH for final review |
Deadline met –
Application submitted on Jan 21, 2000 |
|
February 1, 2000 |
Application packets
out to Cohort I schools |
February 2, 2000 |
|
February 29, 2000 |
Student application
deadline |
Deadline was
extended to March 28, 2000 due to lack of interest in the program |
|
March 1, 2000 |
Meet to discuss
T-shirt designs |
Meet on March 3 |
|
March 10, 2000 |
M.A.T.H. 2000 committee
meeting to facilitate selection process/Choose final design for T-shirts |
Deadline met |
|
March 24, 2000 |
Interns selected
and notified via mail, telephone, teacher |
Letters were mailed
to interns who applied |
|
April 1, 2000 |
M.A.T.H. 2000 Workshop
– Museum Introduction |
Deadline met –
workshop held at The CMH |
|
April 29, 2000 |
M.A.T.H. 2000
Workshop – Rice University |
Deadline met –
workshop held at Rice University |
|
May 6, 2000 |
SWE-HA Student
Awards Reception |
All interns were invited |
|
May 11, 2000 |
Make-Up Training
Workshop |
Deadline met –
workshop held at The CMH – Policies and Procedures covered |
|
May 20, 2000 |
M.A.T.H. 2000
Workshop – visit to the fabrication shop |
Deadline met –
workshop held at The CMH |
|
May 27 – July 30,
2000 |
M.A.T.H. 2000
Internship |
14 interns 10 SWE-HA mentors |
|
June 22, 2000 |
M.A.T.H. 2000
Social/Mixer |
Held to evaluate
mid-program progress |
|
July 28, 2000 |
Math Teachers
Conference at CMH |
2 SWE-HA mentors 1 intern attended |
|
August 3, 2000 |
M.A.T.H. 2000
Internship Reception |
Held to
congratulate all girls for participating |
Budget
At
the end of January SWE-HA received a check for $2610 from SWE National to
support the program. The check was for 90%
of the allotted grant.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Item |
Budgeted
Amount |
Line
Item |
Actual
Expenses |
|
|
Program
Supplies |
$500.00 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
33
Badges@ $1.00 each |
$33.00 |
|
|
|
|
15
Math Study Guides @ 12.55 each plus S&H |
$244.09 |
|
|
|
|
Colored
copies |
$23.70 |
|
Total
Budget Left |
$199.21 |
|
Total Expenses |
$300.79 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Transportation
|
$600.00 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Total
Budget Left |
$600.00 |
|
Total Expenses |
$0.00 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Recognition
Ceremony |
$500 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jason's
Deli (sandwiches, etc.) |
$348.40 |
|
|
|
|
Gifts
(Mancala Games) |
$149.85 |
|
|
|
|
Gift
Certificates |
$140.00 |
|
|
|
|
Gift
Bags |
$15.00 |
|
Total
Budget Left |
($153.25) |
|
Total Expenses |
$653.25 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
MATH
Interns T-Shirts |
$400.00 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
35
T-Shirts @$8.90/shirt |
$311.50 |
|
|
|
|
Set
up Charges |
$100.00 |
|
Total
Budget Left |
($11.50) |
|
Total Expenses |
$411.50 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Workshops/Consultants |
$600.00 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Workshop
I |
$32.82 |
|
|
|
|
Rice
University |
$410.50 |
|
|
|
|
Workshop
III |
$0.00 |
|
|
|
|
Workshop
IV |
$25.00 |
|
Total
Budget Left |
$131.68 |
|
Total Expenses |
$468.32 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Family
Math Event Supplies |
$300.00 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Total
Budget Left |
$300.00 |
|
Total Expenses |
$0.00 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Total
Budgeted |
$2,900.00 |
|
Total Expenses |
$1,833.86 |
|
Total
Budget Left |
$1,066.14 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Outstanding budget
item includes the Family Math Event.
This event will be held in March 2001, in accordance with original proposal.
Measured Results
From
the 20 applications received, there were 14 participants in the program. The 14 girls were from diverse backgrounds,
4 being African American and 10 Hispanic.
All 14 girls were from 5 of the targeted Houston Independent School
District schools.
The
progress of the program was measured through a middle and end of program
evaluation. The middle program
evaluation was conducted in a very informal atmosphere, at a social/mixer type
of event. This gave the girls an opportunity
to interact with the SWE-HA mentors and Museum volunteers to speak honestly and
openly about the program and how it had effected their lives. The final evaluation was performed at the
reception, which was held for the interns, parents, mentors and volunteers.
Feedback
and evaluation of the program revealed a distinct desire on the part of both
participating engineers and the 8th graders to continue the program and
incorporate it into a sustainable program at the Museum. Interns noted significant changes in their
feelings about math after participating in the program. Comments such as “. . . Now I see that math
is more than numbers and words. It has
to do with strategy and thinking” and “. . . I didn’t know that there were so
many ways of doing all sorts of math” and that “math is important in our lives
and is everywhere” clearly illustrate the impact of the M.A.T.H. Intern 2000
program. Interns also indicated a sense of pride because they were able to work
at a Museum over the summer.
Both
the engineers and Interns felt that they learned a lot about how to work with
young children and the public and that the program was fun and rewarding. The Interns learned a lot about themselves
as well and several M.A.T.H. Interns noted how important being patient and kind
was to be successful with the young visitors.
Additionally, the Interns appreciated the opportunity to work closely
with professional engineers. The
Interns felt that they gained new friends, learned a lot from their mentors
both about math content, about how to work with the public, and about career
opportunities.
SWE-HA
members also gained from the program.
One noted how beneficial the program was for her by saying “They
(interns) bring out good things in me.”
SWE-HA members felt that participating in the program provided “a great
way to contribute to a really neat team and two great organizations.” SWE-HA mentors expressed that participation
in the program resulted in positive influences on the Interns because they were
able to develop relationships with the Interns over time, encourage the girls,
and help the girls to develop confidence in themselves, as well as provide them
with information about career possibilities.
Publicity
·
Articles were
submitted for the January, February and April 2000 editions of the SWE-HA
Newsletter.
·
Internship program
was publicized in The CMH bi-monthly calendar and newsletter
·
The Internship
program was posted on The CMH web site www.cmhouston.org
·
An article was
published in Inside Houston magazine in April 2000 publicizing the math exhibit
“Everyone Counts”
·
The math exhibit and the
internship program were mentioned on a TV show regarding upcoming Museum events
in April 2000.
·
The program was
featured in the 1999-2000 CMH Annual Report
·
Publicized in the
Week of February 11-17, 2000 Houston Business Journal
·
Publicized in an
article in the Houston Chronicle
Lessons Learned
Our scope for target
schools was too narrow. We should have
opened the program to all of HISD schools.
We had to scramble to get girls into the program at the last minute.
Project Title: Math
Achievement Through Hands On Internships 2000 (MATH 200)
Date: Program ran from April 1 – August 3, 2000
Project Manager: Jeannie Gardner
Section: Houston Area
Email: jeannie.gardner@att.net Phone: 713-522-4759
Deliverables: Indicate type
(i.e. document, web page, brochure, etc.), title, and media (hard copy, email
file, disk, etc.)
Documents via email,
Children’s Museum Houston web page (www.cmhouston.org),
hard copie of the Children’s Museum 1999-2000 Annual Report
Select the one primary Strategic Priority this project
addressed:
Education
SWE Committees to which this report and deliverables would be of
interest: