The University of the Republic of San Marino organized an initiative for 31 elementary school students in San Marino, focusing on topics such as mathematics and bullying, through educational and entertainment sessions.
Professor Chiara Giacomoni, who teaches Civil and Management Engineering at the University of San Marino, presented her illustrated children's book "The Extraordinary Story of Zero," which she wrote for the publishing house Pane e Sale, to the third-year A and B classes at the Domagnano campus on the morning of Tuesday, June 1st.
The event, held outdoors and lasting over two hours, featured activities such as games and discussions on issues of exclusion and integration, as well as the perspectives from which children and adolescents experience daily life with others. "The students," Giacomoni explains, "discussed their experiences with the topics covered, sharing, for example, how they managed to overcome some situations of exclusion. Despite the sensitive nature of the topics, they interacted enthusiastically, making the morning very engaging. The intention," the academic continues, "was also to approach mathematics by giving it form and concreteness. For this initiative, I specifically created a three-dimensional prototype of Zero, the book's protagonist, to somehow make the operations physically tangible and thus bring them into a new dimension, different from books where mathematics remains too theoretical. The text I presented," concludes the professor from the University of San Marino, "was written to prepare the minds of the youngest students to embrace the very complex mathematical concepts they are already tackling in elementary school and that will accompany them all the way to university, where my experience often provides testimony from girls and boys who have not fully grasped some basic mathematical concepts."
