First Day of Summer School – “Camp”

A Report By Will Frager - July 15, 2013
Today was a big day. A lot happened, including but not limited to the first day of summer school for the students entering the 2nd grade. The lessons are primarily directed by our teacher,  Marie Cham. The name and theme of the camp is "A school is a team." We are emphasizing group work, cooperation, school culture, mutual kindness,  and having a collective goal.
 
To give more details on the last objective, we are using a point system where the class together earns points. There are many ways they can earn points. I will discuss some of those in a moment. When the class reaches certain point thresholds, they receive rewards. Today they earned 100 points, meaning they got to play with little water guns after the lessons were finished. The points carry over from day to day. When they reach 200 points, 300 points, etc. they will "earn" additional activities.
 
How the children earn points: The children earn points whenever they exhibit behavior the school wants to encourage. If they work diligently on a lesson, they can earn points. If one child exhibits kindness to another, they can earn points. If the children ask good questions, and so on.
 
The points can never be taken away, but what can happen instead is that the teacher can say "Children, you came so close to earning more points, but unfortunately not everyone was _____ (paying attention, respecting each other, participating, etc). " An example of one I did today, when one child was sitting on the floor, "Children, you are so close to earning points! Unfortunately one person is not sitting properly... (all of the children eye this individual).  Ok! 5, 4, 3 (hurry hurry! sit in your desk!!- the other children say), 2, 1! Ok! We are all sitting neatly now! Here is another 10 points."
 
I prefer not to name names while doing this, so it is not the teacher vs. the student, but rather the students' collective goal and thus expectations of each other that prompt a misbehaving child to get in line. Also, what is critical is that the teacher announces and clearly explains every time the children receive points or miss an opportunity because of a certain behavior.
 
To quickly summarize the daily schedule, each day consists of a culture building exercise, followed by two lessons (with breaks, games, reading, and other activities interspersed throughout the day). I will include the detailed schedule in the document I create for the summer camp.
 
Regarding the lessons, we followed a lesson structure first presented by Peggy. I may yet change it  based on how it is working in the hands of our teachers. But mainly it consists of
1.) Choosing and presenting an objective,
2.) Finding a way of capturing the children's attention regarding this objective (telling a story about when someone needed this but did not know it, etc),
3.) Giving the core lesson
4.) Doing group work, activities, manipulatives, etc.
5.) Doing individual work which serves as assessment
6.) Identifying what materials are required for this lesson
 
We have a weekly lesson plan form I asked Marie Cham to fill out. For each day I asked her to select two objectives that the children should know before entering 2nd grade and around the difficulty of their final exams. For the first week, we are only doing math and language arts objectives. I worked with her more on designing today's first lesson and then let her do the second lesson more on her own.
 
I expect the operating cost of the summer school to be that of operating the normal school for two weeks (except we are feeding one class, not two). We have not chosen to do shirts for the children, though this is still a possibility for the second week. Up till now the shirts have been a minor point for us as our emphasis has been foremost on training and observing Marie Charm and assessing the level of the students.
 
I would say it was a successful first day. Marie Cham is making an effort to implement new techniques and there are several students entering 2nd grade who appear to be doing quite well. I will get a better feel for their level as the summer school progresses. Tomorrow our culture building exercise will be on asking questions, as the children are not yet comfortable doing this, at least in front of the other children.
 
Will Frager