It’s totally fine that there are only six weeks left of school when I decide to revive the monthly math newsletter I created for my district last year. I had published four issues before the pandemic hit — then, like everything else, it stopped. I’ve been busy!
Here’s Issue 5 for May 2021:
I think a newsletter is a great way to share snippets of information and resources now and then. If you haven’t started one yet, I hope this encourages you to give it a shot. As a TOSA (teacher on special assignment), my audience is the K–8 teachers in our district. When I create each issue, I try to keep the following in mind:
One page.
There’s probably a study showing a strong correlation between the length of a newsletter and how fast it gets deleted.Mostly consistent features.
Mine has six recurring sections:Number Talks – These routines invite students to share their mathematical thinking and spark meaningful discourse. I hope our teachers are using them regularly.
Visual Pattern – Because, duh! :)
Problem / Puzzle / Quote / Fun Fact / Cartoon – I rotate this based on what’s fresh and fun.
Math Resource – Something I personally use and find valuable. There are too many out there, so I try to keep it real.
Featured Blog Post – I try to find posts written by teachers or from when they were still in the classroom. Being an editor for mathblogging.org helps.
Good Read – I have more math books than education acronyms. I only feature the ones I’ve read more carefully (i.e., not just skimmed with coffee stains on them).
Please feel free to use my format as a template (and here’s another one) if you’re unsure where to begin. The key is to pick features you can sustain — stuff you naturally enjoy reading or collecting. You don’t want the newsletter to become one more dreaded task. I aim for monthly (during the school year). Okay, yes — I missed the last 13 months. So maybe quarterly works better for you. A weekly one might be overkill.
Serving K–8 teachers means I don’t get too specific with content. But I hope, for example, a first-grade teacher sees the May issue and thinks:
“I could try a number talk like that.”
“I wonder if there’s a task on Open Middle for my grade.”
“This visual pattern could turn into a great counting activity.”
As for the rest — the blog post, the book, the puzzle — I hope we can all find time to read and play with math just for the joy of it.
I’d love to see what you create!