The members of Math-a-licious started off Discovery Term by traveling to the Leesville Elementary School in Raleigh to tutor fourth graders–budding math students. Upon arriving at the school, we introduced ourselves to a class of fourth graders and got to work. Each of the Cary Academy students worked with one or two of the Leesville students, helping them with math concepts and giving them example problems for practice. The topics ranged from operations with fractions and decimals to word problems with area and perimeter. For us Upper School students, for years we have been doing these kinds of problems every day in our math classes. However, teaching these topics to others was a bit of a challenge. It has been a long time since many of us have had to explain fundamental fraction concepts to someone else. Trying to think of ways to explain concepts that now come as natural to us tested our own conceptual understanding of basic math. However, the first day of tutoring was a great success, and I believe the children at the school had a better understanding of math concepts afterward. To finish our day, we ate lunch at the Crabtree Valley Mall food court, walked around the mall a bit, and returned to school for some board games. Day One was a great success.
