Meeting #1, January 12, 2009

Our first meeting! All of the girls were a little uncertain....it's hard to know what to expect when you first join a new group. I explained that our group has a several goals:

• Create a peer group of strong mathematics students, so that they will be able to support and encourage each other through middle school to achieve academically
• Build lasting friendships between wonderful girls who might not get to know each other in the normal school day
• Explore math through service oriented projects and projects that the girls initiate as they gain more experience working together
• Meet mentors to support them as they move closer to high school, and meet professional women who use math as a part of their daily work
• Become mentors and tutors to girls who are invited to join our group next year as incoming sixth graders

We talked about our first project.....a design for remodelling Ms. Stark's classroom. Ms. Stark teaches students with severe disabilities, so access and accommodations to serve her students are important issues in the physical design of her classroom. This project will likely carry us through the end of the year.

Today I introduced scale drawing, and we set a scale of 6 inches = 1/4 cm for our drawings. We made our first visit to Ms. Stark's room, and worked in teams to start the scale drawings of her room that we'll use as the basis for our designs. It surprised me to see just how challenging this was -- the process of translating the actual measurements to a graph paper drawing of her classroom. The girls also were uncertain how to work as a part of a cohesive group, which may end up being one of the most valuable skills we learn together.