. Students will learn camp cheers, perform skits and
hear from motivational speakers.
Also new is an approach designed to reinforce reading and writing skills
while allowing students to explore new interests, unfamiliar topics or
career options.
Students will choose which classes and workshops they'll attend, said Tanya
Graham, literacy project manager. One proposed workshop is titled Criminal
Mastermind: Writing the Perfect Getaway Scene, and another is titled Can
You Make the Cut? Becoming a Surgeon.
The district announced plans for the camp in spring and provided additional
details last week.
While the camp will be open to all rising sixth-, seventh- and
eighth-graders, the district especially wants to enroll those who, test
scores show, are struggling readers.
Yet that group has shown little interest in summer school, officials said,
even though it's critical that they raise their game before high school.
The district's traditional four-week summer school, geared to struggling
students in the elementary and middle grades, provided three hours of
instruction in math and reading daily. Schools with full-day programs
offered sports or other activities in the afternoon.
In January, about 2,700 students in fifth, sixth and seventh grades missed
the proficiency mark on the 4Sight test, used to predict student performance
on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, or PSSA.
Only 648, or about 24 percent, of those students signed up for summer
school, and only 295, or about 11 percent, completed the program.
Because reading is a concern -- on the most recent PSSA, 59.5 percent of
middle-grade students scored advanced or proficient in math, compared to
56.7 percent in reading -- the camp will focus exclusively on literacy. And
officials hope the camp design and stepped-up recruitment will boost
enrollment. Four mornings a week, students will study reading and writing
through a theme they select.
Tentative options include McDonald's, Mars and Flying Cars: Spectacular
Science, with a look at environmentalism, fitness and the solar system;
Let Your Creative Juices Flow: Exploring the Arts, with units on film
production, dance and music; and It's a Small World After All: Global
Cultures, with exploration of food, modern heroes and surviving disasters
around the world.
Those ideas came from student focus groups, said Lauren Meehan, project
coordinator.
One morning each week, students will attend a workshop designed to stir a
passion or prepare them for college and work. Examples include the workshops
on crime writing and becoming a surgeon.
Embedded in the lessons and workshops will be exercises designed to help
students better understand organization of text, an author's point of view,
inferences, context clues and antonyms -- all areas in which the city's
middle-grade students have struggled on the state test.
It is the higher-level thinking skills that we're hoping to get at, said
Nancy Kodman, the district's executive director of strategic initiatives.
Each afternoon, students will participate in an extracurricular activity,
sponsored by a community group and related in some way to reading and
writing.
The district initially intended to finance the camp next summer and in 2011
with $16.6 million in federal stimulus money passed through the state.
Officials modified the plans after learning they'd be shorted $6 million,
part of a pot of stimulus money the state diverted for other education uses.
The shift means fewer field trips and a narrower range of afternoon
activities for campers.
The district will operate the regular summer school next year for students
in elementary grades.
The district traditionally has held summer school in June and July. Next
year, the regular program and the middle-grade camp will be held in July and
August to gear students up for the school year.
Joe Smydo can be reached at jsm...@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1548.
*
Read more:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09312/1011759-298.stm#ixzz0WMNOwMVY
--
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Ta.
Mark Rauterkus mark.rauter...@gmail.com
http://Rauterkus.blogspot.com
http://CLOH.wikia.com
412 298 3432 = cell
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