The Summer Session begins

You’ll notice a new header at the top of the page;something to reflect the new direction I’ll take with the summer school classes I’ll teach this summer. Don’t know how I got suckered into teaching the summer session at school, but I’m glad I did — I’ll be working with three other teachers in working through a unit entitled Frontiers. There’s a Social aspect, a Science aspect, a Math aspect, and of course the Language Arts aspect.

When I say Frontiers, I mean the breaking of boundaries and not necessarily the wide open space of the West. Throughout history people have conquered frontiers (including the West), and it’s the crossing of that unknown plane that is stupendous. The frontier of space, the frontiers of mathematics, the frontiers of science all help move civilization forward, and we’d like to allow the kids in summer school the opportunity to do something fun while gaining the skills they’ll need in the coming year.

And while me do mean business, we really do want to have fun — we’re actually looking at summer school as a “Camp” instead of school because we want the kids to be able to interact with the work we’ll give them and to make meaning of their own work, and to come out of the whole experience changed people with new skills.

For my part, I’m having the kids read The City of Ember, by Jeanne DuPrau — (click to read about my past experiences with this book). I think the kids will definitely take to the story of a boy an a girl who figure out that the real world is much larger than the small, dark city they call home. They know there’s somehting out there, beyond the dark borders of Ember, but it seems no one will believe them.

I initially planned to have thekids read this book and create a script for a student-movie-version, but I think I’ll just use the text as a springboard for other discussions:

• What frontiers have you conquered in life?
• What do kids know that adults need to know, too? Is there something that adults are dismissing?
• How can we make our own world a better place?
• Are you content with living a static life, or does living require more than stasis?

And then I’ll have the kids working on a built-up wiki about the book — city history, characters (their traits, motivations, etc.), level of education, levels of technology, levels of government, levels of religion, and so on. It’s a fun read, but there’s more there than the kids might at first realize — pretty deep for a kids’ story.

The sutdents will also use my classroom as research for the Social Studies course. In that class, they’ll research a famous person who conquered a known frontier, and their findings will be written as historical fiction; by the end of the summer session I’ll have also used this book and this class as a springboard to creative writing to supplement that Social Studies goal. Again, the research will be written as historical fiction, because summer just isn’t the time for MLA.

The Science teacher will integrate her class into both my class and the social studies course by performing experiments and labs with the students; the Math class will supplement the science.

Oh, and my class takes place completely online. It’s going to be a blast, and I only have until monday to completely ready myself. I’ll definitely keep you updated on our progress through the summer session.