WENDELL - Several Saturdays a month, a group of dedicated youngsters and teachers climb into buses or cars and head to Carver Elementary School.

But those third, fourth and fifth-graders and their instructors are not getting up with the sun to enjoy sports or recreation. Saturday Camp was established this month to help students increase their math and reading skills.

Carver, one of the smaller elementary schools in Wake County with about 450 students, has a number of children struggling to pass End of Grade tests.

Last school year, just 53.5 percent of third graders achieved at or above grade level in reading. Not quite 78 percent passed the math EOG. Fourth-graders did better, topping out at 84.1 percent showing mastery in math concepts on their EOG tests.

Teachers met with students struggling in reading and math twice a week after school last year. But sessions didn’t begin until 4:15 p.m.

“Some of our students weren’t getting home until 6,” Faison said, adding that because students were tired, they didn’t do as well as they could have.

This year, she decided to offer tutoring on Saturdays, calling it Saturday Camp to add to its appeal. Faison and the school’s instructional resource teacher show up most Saturdays. Each camp instructor is on staff at Carver, although some, like second-grade teacher Sandi Langley, tutor grades other than those they teach during the week.

“We’re trying to give students another opportunity to get some help,” Faison said.

Camp will be held several Saturdays a month through May, excluding the school’s track-out time in March.

Tutoring sessions begin at 8:30 a.m., and camp ends with a catered lunch that includes crowd-pleasing entrees like pizza.

Classes are small, about eight to 10 students apiece, which makes it easier to spend more time on topic, Langley said. She works with a group of fourth-graders during Saturday sessions.

The Buckle Down series teachers are using to help students master math and reading seems to be working, Langley said.

Finding students

Each student was assessed in math and reading before camp began, to give teachers a clear picture of each one’s capabilities. Each subsequent Saturday, they review math and reading concepts, then test again. If time permits, teachers will review each test in detail.

“We’ll work through the questions they missed and try to find out why,” Langley said. “Whether it was the wording of the problem or whatever.”

End of Grade tests are tough, and they are lengthy. Just the reading portion can take fourth and fifth graders more than two hours to complete, Langley said. During that time, students must read and analyze all types of writing from poems to passages to recipes.

At camp, she tries to teach students how to read test questions. “They need to rule out answers that are obviously not correct, and they need to find the main idea of an article or passage,” Langley said.

For math, she focuses on the basics. What are fractions, whole numbers and decimals, and how do they work? How do you convert a decimal to a fraction, and vice-versa? For example, she’ll show students how to figure out that “2/4 is greater than 4/10.”

After students master those concepts, they move on to multiplication and division.

Langley, who completed her student teaching at Carver before joining the staff nine years ago, chose to teach during Saturday Camp to help more students succeed.

“I would like to see wonderful test scores, or at least improvement in test scores,” as a result of the tutoring sessions, she said.

Although it’s too early to tell if teachers’ efforts will lead to an increase in End of Grade test scores this spring, Langley said she is already impressed by the dedication shown by her students.

“All eight children I have work hard,” Langley said. “It’s a testament to them and their parents to get them up and get them here every Saturday.”

Saturday Camp is funded by the school system’s Title I program.