Penn GSE’s pilot ABCS elective builds new math friendships and curriculum along the way

On a particularly sunny day in May 2024, the already light and bright Samuel Powel Elementary School Library was imbued with excitement and laughter after being transformed for a very special engagement — a math festival celebrating the culmination of Penn GSE’s pilot elective: Math Tutoring in an Elementary School.

Over the course of a few hours, three classrooms of exuberant first graders visited stations run by the undergraduate and Penn GSE graduate students enrolled in the inaugural course. Tables were set up for kids to color maps, count steps, and play, among other games, “Apple Picking,” “Tile with a Smile,” and “Domino Dissection.” All incorporate strategic thinking, basic number sense, and math fluency within engaging games or puzzles.

The instant reviews of the math festival were raves. One student unknowingly summed up the central goal of the day when they exclaimed, “How is that math? It’s too fun!”

The Math Tutoring in an Elementary School course was co-taught by instructors Joy Anderson Davis, who serves as a senior instructional coach for the Penn Literacy Network at Penn GSE, and Caroline B. Ebby, an adjunct professor at Penn GSE who is also a senior researcher at CPRE and the director of the Responsive Math Teaching Project (RMT).

The academically based community service (ABCS) elective is supported by the Barbara and Edward Netter Center for Community Partnerships and is open to Penn undergraduate and graduate students. Its purpose is to redefine traditional tutoring by designing its curriculum and approach.

Read the full article from Penn GSE here.